Save RSCI

I, like probably 99% of the 732,848 authors registered in the RSCI, read with indignation the article by Alexander Fradkov “ The RSCI teaches you to lie ” (TrV-Nauka, No. 189). What is outrageous, of course, is not the author’s position, but the outrageous facts described. If the Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov reads the article and checks the stated facts, then after their confirmation he will be obliged to issue a decree within 24 hours banning the institutions of the Ministry of Education and Science from taking into account RSCI indicators for citations and the H-index in all competitive procedures. As a result, our Russian science will lose one of the few indicators that at least somehow made it possible to differentiate scientists, teachers and research groups. Again we will have the saying “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.”

Over the past ten years, I have actively participated in several publishing projects that were supported by the RSCI platform. I hope that in these projects we managed to instill in many Russian scientists the “rules of good manners” in writing articles, explain and show with examples that it is necessary to maintain a high level of citation culture, that, having written in a scientific article about your new ideas or successes, you must add at least a minimal analysis of what other scientists have done and are doing in a similar area. The formal requirements of the Ministry of Education and Science about the need for publications in publications indexed in the RSCI helped to overcome the traditional inertia of thinking and the desire to write and do as before.

But now we must admit that the RSCI is burning, the RSCI must be saved, we all urgently need to put out the fire together. Now it is impossible to create commissions to study the questions at what speed it will burn, what will happen to the remains, about “distortions and kinks,” about developing modernization plans, etc. We must first put out the fire, and then, of course, start researching and finding ways to optimize work.

To save the RSCI, I suggest:

1. Enter the status “frozen” in the journal (publication) card, which will imply the temporary exclusion of all references from this journal (publication) from the lists of citations of authors, from the calculation of Hirsch indices and impact factors. Transfer to this status all magazines (publications) mentioned in Alexander Fradkov’s article along with specific facts.

2. Scan the entire RSCI database and transfer to “frozen” status all journals (publications) in which:

• more than 1% of links are to non-existent works;
• in more than 10% of articles, references are not indicated in the text or references in the text are given in portions of more than five at once (for example, “articles [1–10] considered a similar problem”);
• In more than 30% of articles, the self-citation level exceeds 50%.

3. Establish a procedure for “unfreezing” a journal (publication) after checking all its issues (issues) during the calendar year following the “freezing”, implying the resumption of accounting for references from this journal (publication) if the conditions of paragraph 2 and other new rules that will be formulated after the fire is extinguished.

I will send my suggestions by letter to the RSCI support service with the subject “Save the RSCI.” If everyone who read my article sends the same proposals to the RSCI support service with the same topic, then this will be a kind of vote for honesty in the RSCI.

Oleg Granichin ,
professor , doctor . Phys. - Math . sciences