Translated material
Who is to us?
A conversation about Russian science in any environment - in friendly or professional - sooner or later turns to the question of how “we have” and as “with them”, understanding, as a rule, the countries of the West. In the process of discussion, it gradually turns out that, they say, “there” everything is different, and we have our own traditions-why compare? Nevertheless, through this kind of comparisons, the vague contours of the future are drawn, the background of expected changes arises.
The implicit landmarks of the scientific community provoke power to forced actions on a power change in reality. So, at the June St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov said: “It is necessary to restore the competitiveness of Russia as a world scientific power, as a center of intellectual development, to regain leadership in the field of fundamental science ... The main task is to change the approach to the organization of scientific activity, the transfer of the main resources to working scientists” [1] .
However, ultimately, a purposeful procession to such high goals ends with throwing and reformers and reformed: according to what path we move, to whom to imitate-American universities or German societies, and maybe French CNRS or Korean R&D centers? To know where to move, it would be nice to imagine where you are and where you can get from this point.
Information about the state of science in certain states is collected on the SCIMAGO Journal & Country Rank, or SJR [2] . Based on the SCOPUS from Elsevier, the portal provides a number of scientific indicators for different countries from 1996 to 2014. A convenient interface for several clicks allows you to navigate a little in the scientific productivity of different countries, whether the citation of the published work is high and what is the distribution of sciences in the disciplines. You can also evaluate the degree of international collaboration and the Hirsch index of the country. There are few criteria, but there is quite enough to draw up the overall picture.
To answer the question of who today can be a “world scientific power”, I decided to find out which countries of which countries are proportionate to the Russian. As the main criteria, I chose: (a) the total number of articles is an understandable quantitative criterion that well reflects the combined performance of the science of this country; (b) the average number of references to one publication is an intuitively clear quality parameter, indicating the significance and originality of work for the world scientific community. The direct digit of the last parameter includes the contribution of self -digitalization.
Judging by the portal, self -digitalization traditions vary greatly. So, the Americans and the Chinese create half of the references to their own work, while Europeans, Japanese and Koreans refer to themselves twice as much. The rest, including Russians, balancing in the middle, giving for their publications about a third of self -digitalities from the total number of links.
To evaluate Russian science, 1996 is a fairly convenient reference point, since the main shock and social shocks from the collapse of the USSR have already passed and the scientific environment has been somewhat stabilized. Thus, the total number of scientific works made in Russia from 30 thousand in 1996 gradually grew and reached more than 50 thousand publications in 2014. True, in the rating of countries by the number of publications, Russia has moved from 8th to 15th place. This means that the growth rate of the number of Russian publications is significantly lower than in other countries.
It is somewhat more difficult to evaluate qualitative changes in the average number of references to publication. To do this, you have to limit yourself to countries with a total number of publications of more than 10 thousand per year. Such a maneuver is necessary to compare the likes with the same and the exclusion of countries similar to the tokelau island with 1 publication and 42 links to it. The maximum number of references to one Russian publication was in 1999 and amounted to 9.13 links to the article, in the rest of the years there are at least 6 links per article.
With such indicators, Russia has been at the end of the list at the end of the list, until 2000, contrary to India and China. In subsequent years, Russia, Poland and Iran already closed the three. In general, this parameter is accumulative and adequately reflects the situation until 2009, however, if you look at the tendency, then Russia is surrounded by Malaysia and Romania. If we allocate countries with the number of publications more than 5 thousand per year, then from the late 1990s to this day, a little lower than Russia, in the number of references to the article, is Ukraine, and a little higher-Brazil and Turkey.
Since 1996, the number of countries with scientific products of more than 10 thousand articles per year has grown more than doubled - from 20 to 43. The list was replenished with the Czech Republic, Singapore, New Zealand, Taiwan, etc. It is important to note that after 2000, the three leaders in this parameter is unchanged - this is Switzerland, Denmark and Holland. It is amazing that the most popular publications - more than 30 links to work in 1996 and more than 20 links in 2008 - are created in small European countries, and not in monsters of science financing, such as the United States and China.
The reason, probably lies in the fact that in these countries science is arranged as hubs in which scientists from many other countries flock. Indeed, the share of publications made by the Swiss in collaboration with foreign colleagues already in 2010 exceeded 60%. The Czech Republic went along the same path, in which 40% of all works are carried out today with the involvement of international cooperation, which made it possible to significantly raise the citation of the work.
As a result of such a ranking, we can determine countries with scientific potential, proportionate Russian science. India and China are still close in quality of articles,
But they went into a hopeless gap in the amount produced. This means that today the four countries are closest to the scientific performance of Russia: Poland, Iran, Türkiye and Brazil. The SJR portal allows you to compare the indicators of the four countries, so the figure shows the characteristics of Russian science and three countries, with the exception of Turkey.
The picture shows that the number of publications has been growing intensively since the late 1990s in Brazil and Iran and a little slower in Poland. Approaching in 2012 to Russian 40 thousand articles a year, saturation has been reached in all three countries. The average number of references significantly exceeds Russian indicators, but is “within reach”.
However, these indicators summarize publications in all disciplines. The SJR portal allows you to consider deposits of various disciplines to these indicators. So, in most developed countries since the 1990s, most articles have been published in medicine. To date, the number of medical publications in Western countries exceeds double the number of articles in the discipline standing in second place in the number of publications. In the countries of Southeast Asia-Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan-the largest number of publications falls on engineering and computer sciences.
In general, the number of publications characterizes mainly fundamental science and indirectly indicates priorities in state financing. In turn, state financing is highly dependent on the structure of society. In democratic states, power expenses should be reported to taxpayers who are more understandable to the importance of research aimed at improving the health of the population. From here, probably, interest in medicine is growing.
In industrialized Asian countries, a request for scientific research comes from state priorities in industrial development, in training engineering personnel and the creation of innovations. Accordingly, fundamental research will gravitate towards engineering. So, among the four countries discussed above, Brazil is closer to the first group, where medicine is put at the forefront, and Iran - to the second group, where engineering sciences prevail. However, neither Russia nor Poland cannot be unequivocally attributed to one of these groups.
In almost all countries of the former USSR, as well as in some European countries, the Soviet Bloc in the 1990s was produced by physicists. In second place were chemistry, materials science, engineering. This situation has survived to this day. So, if the natural sciences are on two legs - Physical Science and Life Science, then the Western countries are based on one leg, and the post -Soviet - on the other.
A significant difference in the development of scientific disciplines in different countries has a strong influence on the degree of collaboration between countries and interest in each other's scientific results. For example, according to the Journal Citation Reports, out of 150 magazines with IF impact factor> 10 about 80% are medical and biological magazines. These magazines publish scientists of most countries where medicine and biology are priority. Accordingly, scientists from countries in which other areas are priority are much less common in high -impetous magazines. Ultimately, the average number of references to one publication in such countries will be significantly lower, and other scientific indicators will significantly differ from most countries.
Thus, it is possible to achieve high scientific indicators for national science only through the development of Life Science disciplines. Actually, Poland went in this way. In the figure, you can see that in Poland from 1996 to 2008 the blue circle of physics is gradually giving way to the green circle of medicine. It is important to notice: at the same time, the pink circle of engineering sciences moves forward.
For comparison, data on Russian scientific disciplines are given. The total advantage of physics over the rest of the disciplines over the decade has been increasing slightly. Exactly the same situation in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Apparently, science in these countries cannot get out of the beaten rut of the Soviet past. Simply put, inertia.
As you can see, Russian science is in a unique position, or, in other words, it costs somewhat apart in world science. If it is true that the request from society or industry dictates more emphasis on medicine or engineering, respectively, then the productivity of physics in post -Soviet countries shows the lack of such requests from both society and industry.
Instead of this, the priorities of scientific disciplines in Russia are completely determined by the merits of the past and the culuar distribution of financing. It is impossible to go “European” or “Asian” way without a long evolutionary change in the scientific environment, without clear and distinct priorities. The Ministry of Education and Science is completely concerned about the international ratings of universities, then suddenly the mouth of Minister Livanov claims that “our goal is simple - a return to those high standards of the education system, which were always inherent in our leading universities in the Soviet Union” [3] . From the trends illustrated above, it clearly follows that one is simply contrary to the other. However, regardless of state goals, Russian science will live for a couple of decades until the energy of the collapse of the USSR is finally dissipated.
Maybe at first glance it is amazing, and it may seem to someone and it is a shame that Russian science is in a series of Brazil-Poland-Iran-Türkiye. These countries do not occupy advanced positions in the scientific world and are equally weakly integrated into world science, having less than a third of publications with foreign co -authors. The commensurate level of human and economic potential determines the productivity of science, and geography, cultural and political characteristics limit the complete inclusion of these countries in the world community.
Inside their region, these countries are definitely scientific leaders. The problem for such states is that the “scientific power” sounds today as Oxymoron. Among the neighbors, one can still play the role of a “regional scientific power”, but even one is not provided for in world science, which is too united for those standing apart.
The cited comparative analysis does not give answers to the damned question “what to do?”, But at least sobering, illustrating that in Russia science is arranged peculiarly even for the proportionate science of Brazil and Iran. Problems similar to ours have been solved for one and a half years and prove that the changes are very painful, are not at all fabulously effective, but in principle they are possible [4] . The wishes to make “here” as in Cambridge, MIT or the Society of Max Planck, abolishing the existing one, sorting out the existing one, reducing the excess, increasing all kinds of efficiency-this is more like a secret to sear the loop and finally captivate the light.
In order to integrate into world science or shift priorities in favor of industry, you need to encourage collaborations, massively send young people to the best laboratories in the world, then return it, providing more favorable working conditions; It is necessary to simplify customs rules for scientists and scientific equipment.
And a lot more is needed, but every time I want to make a reservation: “It was necessary” to do all this in ten to fifteen years. It was not necessary to do at all in order to become a “world scientific power”, but only so that in our country people could freely and calmly engage in the most ordinary science. In order for the country to be included in the global world due to not only the work of minerals, but also such a strategic resource as knowledge.
3. Livanov called on Russian universities to return to the Soviet level of quality . August 24, 2015.
4. Sterligov I. Reform of science: Polish lessons . April 13, 2010.