Resolution of the 4th session of the conference of scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences on March 27, 2018

“Problems of science not should be of interest exclusively to the academic community”

The fourth session of the Conference of Scientists notes with alarm that Russia has lost its status as a leading scientific power and the degradation of domestic science continues. In the ranking of countries in terms of the level of research activity, our country is in the middle of the second ten, and in terms of the share of scientific researchers in the structure of the labor force - in the third ten.

The “reform” of 2013 significantly worsened the situation, so now we should be talking primarily about restoring the scientific, scientific-educational and cultural environment. Without this, any strategies for scientific and technological development will remain only empty declarations of intent, and no financial injections or manipulation of indicators and reporting will help restore Russia’s role in world science. Therefore, the first and foremost point of any strategy should be the restoration of this environment, including a specific plan for increasing the share of researchers and creating conditions for them to actively work at the modern world level.

At the moment, despite a certain increase in funding for fundamental science in 2018 and the adoption in the first reading of a bill amending the law on the RAS, which expands the powers of the Academy, the situation of RAS institutes and scientists continues to remain extremely difficult. Increasing bureaucratization is destroying the scientific environment and killing Russian fundamental science, and the increase in salaries of scientific employees makes the situation even more critical with the lack of funds for the salaries of engineers, mechanics, the administrative apparatus, for the purchase of equipment, consumables, conducting expeditions, etc.

Despite the fact that FANO is achieving a number of positive results regarding the property complex of academic science, obtaining additional funding in a number of areas of activity and other economic matters, FANO officials who are not competent in this matter cannot manage scientific activities. The main feature of many decisions made is their formal bureaucratic nature without understanding the essence of the problems and tasks of science. As a result, all the shortcomings of the Russian bureaucratic system spilled out onto the institutes, to which were added new ones related to the mechanical spread of approaches used in other industries to the scientific sphere.

Theses about the need: to focus exclusively on selected areas with an emphasis on megascience; support only the strongest in science; demand immediate implementation; make competitive financing the main one; to introduce standard hours to account for the work of scientists (which even the USSR State Planning Committee at one time rejected), etc. - define extremely primitive measures of “liberalization” of the scientific sphere, aimed at creating the appearance of a flourishing of science, but in reality, disastrous for science.

As a result, the unified system of scientific institutes is fragmented into separate independent structures; the main goal of the “leading teams” is not scientific research, but the struggle for grants and a conveyor belt of publications, often meaningless; More and more time is spent producing endless reports focused on man-made structures to determine “effectiveness.” Serious, original, long-term research and “breakthrough” results become impossible.

Objective data show that during the leadership of FANO since 2013, the number of researchers at the RAS-FANO institutes has decreased (by 2.6%), the number of doctors of sciences has decreased (by 6%), candidates of sciences (by 3.8%), until December In 2017, the ratio of the average salary to the national average decreased (from 1.10 to 1.08), the capital and technical level of research fell by 15–16%.

The distorted, abnormal situation of lack of sufficient basic funding and excessive reliance on competitive funding also leads to a distortion of the meaning and purpose of the grant system. All over the world, grants are received not for salaries, but for supporting graduate students and postdocs, traveling to conferences, and purchasing equipment. The fact that our scientific workers are forced to “fight” for grants in order to ensure a living wage is purely an invention of our bureaucratic system. It is necessary to achieve a normal solution - increasing employee rates, instead of invented artificial structures based on demagogic slogans, such as “increasing productivity”, “targeted funding”, “interdisciplinarity”, “technological platform”, etc.

When making decisions about reforming science, it is necessary to clearly understand that science cannot give results instantly. The chain from fundamental science to industry has been built over decades. It is impossible to maintain a high level only in supposedly “effective” areas if research in most scientific areas is destroyed. Only the development of research on a broad front creates the foundation, that margin of safety, on the basis of which outstanding results can be obtained and effective liberalization of the innovation sphere is possible with a gradual expansion of the network of non-academic organizations engaged in applied research in a free market.

The conference believes that the following urgent measures should be taken aimed at restoring the scientific and scientific-educational environment and creating conditions for researchers to actively work at the modern world level.

1. Increase budget spending on basic research from 0.15% in 2018 to 0.3% of GDP by 2024 to provide the necessary funding for the purchase of equipment, infrastructure support, expeditions and conferences.
2. Immediately stop the mass layoffs of scientific workers in a number of RAS-FANO institutes and the transfer of the vast majority of those remaining to fractional rates under the pretext of implementing decree No. 597.
3. Recognize as unfounded and stop all attempts to mechanically standardize the work of scientists and evaluate its effectiveness, especially based only on taking into account articles from the WoS database.
4. Achieve an increase in the base salary by correcting the current absurd situation, when the official salary of a researcher at RAS institutes is close to the subsistence level, and any increase in salary must be accompanied by a mechanical increase in the number of publications. Reconsider regional differences in setting scientists' salaries.
5. Eliminate the blatant absurdity with the legal distinction between “research assistant” and “research worker”, which does not allow, when implementing the “May Decree,” to increase the salaries of heads of departments, deputy directors, engineers, and research interns who are conducting active scientific work.
6. When ranking scientific organizations, take into account the specifics of different branches of knowledge. When certifying and assessing the performance of scientific employees, take into account sensitive work.
7. Stop the rampant paperwork that distracts scientists from performing their direct duties.
8. Abandon the straightforward policy of supporting only priority areas, aggravated by the arbitrary choice of these priorities. A broad range of research should be supported, and the selection of time priorities should be the result of careful scientific analysis and broad discussion among the scientific community.

Participants in the Fourth Session of the Conference of Scientists believe that in order to consistently solve the problems listed above and overcome the accumulated problems, it is necessary to achieve changes in legislation in the following directions.

1. The first step should be the speedy development and adoption of a law on the RAS, establishing its special status in the system of government institutions and returning the institutes to the operational management of the RAS (including administrative, financial and scientific management).
2. Within the framework of this law, it is necessary to limit the scope of FANO activity to managing the economic affairs of RAS institutes and resolving issues related to the property of the RAS.
3. The law on the Russian Academy of Sciences should be linked to the law “On scientific, scientific, technical and innovative activities in the Russian Federation” that is currently being developed. The discussed draft of this law does not stand up to criticism. It is completely inconsistent with the interests of science and scientific workers; the changes proposed in it can only worsen the situation with the scientific and technological development of the country. The law must be radically revised and undergo wide discussion in the scientific community before consideration.
4. As part of the work on the draft law “On scientific, scientific-technical and innovative activities in the Russian Federation,” the question should be raised about the need to change the regulatory framework governing the financing of scientific organizations in order to adequately take into account the peculiarities of scientific work and eliminate the senseless bureaucratic burden on institutions and researchers, simplifying the procurement procedure for reagents, instruments, equipment and consumables for scientific institutes.
5. The draft law “On scientific, scientific-technical and innovative activities in the Russian Federation” should reflect that for the effective use of scientific results
   it is necessary to develop a separate (from the Russian Academy of Sciences) infrastructure—a system of industry research institutes—and encourage businesses to conduct applied research.

The participants of the Fourth Session of the Conference of Scientists, representing scientists of all ranks from all regions of the country from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, are confident that questions of the existence of science should not be of interest exclusively to the academic community. When it becomes clear that the problems of a state in which science has been destroyed affect all layers of society without exception, it may already be too late.