Translated material
Mania of numbers
As quantitative methods undermine the quality of science and the foundations of the community
The non -political protest has a special price. The struggle for nature and the city, against torture and stuffing - the basis of informal hyperpartia of non -partisans, ideologies outside of ideologies. Instant assemblies do not need party bits; “Flickering”, “floating” organization cannot be prohibited or not allowed somewhere. This was also shown by the current protest of scientists against the next bureaucratic experiment, which turned out to be unprecedented in sharpness and coverage. Science is one of the bonds of Russian identity. And here it is better not to bend the stick.
Chronicle of diving reform
In 2013, the authorities showed a rare concern for scientists, freeing them from unnecessary hardships of management of academic property. The research swore not to attempted. But then the institutes themselves still quietly reassigned Fano, now the Ministry of Education and Science. Now they tell everyone that during state financing, it does not happen otherwise, as if forgetting how it was in the USSR. The chairmen of the relevant committee (GKNT) had the status of the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, but there were no such replenishments at all. Like the ministry itself.
Having squeezed out institutions, our universal management, as usual, took up omnivorous technologies. If scientific achievements are measured by naked statistics, anyone can manage science. And whatever. When the reports were reduced to the shaft of articles, excluding from it a monograph, collections, reports and working analysts, the publication of books has doubled even in those sciences where it was this format that was always the main thing in fixing knowledge and authority.
The “Methodology for calculating a comprehensive score of publication performance” (KBPR) introduced this year. The quality of articles was reduced to the same amount - to the citation of magazines, which directly contradicts the modern methodology. Regardless of the industry of the TOP knowledge of one of the foreign, commercial databases, Web of Science (WOS) was estimated forty times higher than Russian magazines from the VAK list and twenty times higher than any monograph, regardless of its quality and volume.
The only filter of science for books was done ... their registration in the book chamber. The databases of WOS and Scopus were taken into account somewhere in the faction, somewhere, and the Russian scientific citation index (RSCI) was not taken into account at all.
The state assignment was calculated regardless of the profile of industries and institutions, throwing 10 or even 20 percent of 2018, although taking the base at such an interval is a gross error. As a result, the assignments of the same in power of the institutions differ not even at times, but by an order of magnitude. Whole directions are discriminated that are critical precisely for Russia and not at all involving foreign publications or transfers, as well as all socio -humanitarian knowledge, which is characterized by a special meaning and reference regime. With obviously insufficient quoting density, such a bibliometry shows either an error or what is already visible with the naked eye.
There were no such “deficiencies” in the history of observations. An open letter of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the President of the Russian Federation raised a wave of appeals. The suddenly collected Presidium of the Academy will be remembered by egregious mesalliance: the deputy minister spoke from the Ministry of Education and Science, and from the Simplea RAS ... the scientific secretary of the physical institute - the developer of the methodology. An attempt to lead the Academy hide behind a candidate physical. Sciences revealed all the absurdity of placement of the order: a separate discipline is in the installation of bibliometry, almost as difficult as the management of war. And this is definitely not physics.
The scale of the disaster
It is time to stop giving all this calculation to the top of near -scientific progress. Initial enthusiasm has long been replaced by criticism of bibliometry in the world, its restriction and direct prohibitions, including legislative ones. Large arrays are taken into account when tracking the most common trends, but in principle they are not applicable in operational management, especially in socio -humanities and mathematics.
Modern methods require evaluating the scientific contribution of publications, as abstracting from the influence (that is, citation) of magazines. We have this “dirty instrument”, which introduces unacceptable distortions, taken as the basis for the binding of points to the place of publication.
It remains and the institutes themselves to value the address of addresses - a boulevard ring, garden, TTK, MKAD ...
Giving out strangers and already recognized mistakes for our unrecognized achievements, we jump into the last car of the departed train, besides with our backs against the move. The name of the KBPR itself gives the rate not on discoveries, but on publications, that is, not for the result, but for indicators. All this is fraught with a strategic scan of a strategic scale. Not so much the real speed of movement is important as the coincidence of the speedometer arrow with the desired division. It is verified: from all this, science degrades as an institute and community, sometimes irreversibly.
The classic shift of the motive for the target gives rise to “cross -pollination” when groups of organized comrades by preliminary conspiracy quote each other on an industrial scale on mutually beneficial conditions. As soon as we heard the word “Hirsch”, as special brigades were immediately thrown to raise this thing to especially important leaders. Blosses “salami-listing” (cutting one result into several articles).
In the plane accounting of monographs, it is enough to cut a thick book five thinner, and you immediately find yourself five times more effective than all your less smart colleagues. Such arithmetic and “ethics” who need to be mastered in the first grade, if not in the sandbox.
The revelry provoked by all this is stopped by only professional ethics, which these methods are just suppressing. Paid publications have already become a massive phenomenon of shadow business and spam: it remains to enter into a share. Russia has every chance to break into world science not with new knowledge, but with old methods, adding something else to the reputation of the country. Until new sanctions for turning science into another unclean sport.
Where the ears stick out and the legs grow. And hands
The National Project "Science" begins with the fact that in terms of the number of good articles, Russia takes 11th place in the world. Accordingly, the entry into the five scientific powers is determined ... by doubling of this indicator. Strictly speaking, the ideology of the “breakthrough” should believe that by 2024 the real (not biblometric) productivity of our science will double-as the GDP once. But still, higher authorities categorically and peremptorly excluded the very opportunity to discuss this installation at numbers.
The experience of total mobilization is known. Theoretically, it is possible to collect tolls, resources and reserves - and launch the conveyor of articles with the entire arsenal of pumping bibliometry. The question is how irreparable harm this will do to science immediately and what will happen to it after 2024. This whole project with built -in methods was clearly composed before the zeroing of the presidential terms, on the principle of “after us at least a flood” and “grass do not grow”. Now the planning horizon is not only real, but also simulations - completely different. But the worse for this panic "race with consequences."
The complete impression that physicists in Fian made only a working model, which then in timekeeping, without showing anyone, cast a regulatory act with egregious shortages in granite. Academicians-secretaries of entire departments did not see the “agreed” in the Russian Academy of Sciences to the order, which means that anyone and bypassing regulations were pushed by the document. Such documents cannot be issued in principle, and with a similar attitude to the procedure, their very adoption may turn out to be legally void.
This is not just an “Contractor’s incident”. The general narcissistic enthusiasm for the game and with reflections is affected. The management system, like a classic narcissus, convicts and suspects everyone in everything, teaches all lives, but is absolutely uncritical about itself. It demands to exclude a conflict of interests in science, when “scientists evaluate themselves”, but at point blank range does not see egregious conflicts of interests in itself. Rejecting the centuries of self -esteem in science and escalating external purely quantitative control, it works completely openly to increase its own status, content and all the same self -esteem.
Self -regulation is literally burned out in science,
Even here, almost normally introduced in the lawyer, architecture, audit and further in alphabet, although from time immemorial the scientific community has been distinguished by the highest examples of professional self -control and ethical self -regulation.
At the same time, the new departmental technique itself is deeply anti -scientific methodically and ethically. Science does not even allow premature publications - the KBPR is not only published, but also introduced in frankly raw form. In science, one counterfact is enough for a revolutionary situation - the KBPR made by physicists for itself does not work literally around the corner. Science requires the strictest accounting of the area of application and all possible differentiations - the KBPR is built on a completely unacceptable, places of simply illiterate unification. For such work, from the scientific workshop, they expel forever and ever and without the right to correspond.
Tunnel at the end of the world
In the current situation, three factors happily converged:
Explicit overkill in administrative absurdism,
a breakthrough of long -willed discontent in the scientific community,
And ... a change of government.
The technique was released a week before the appointment of the new minister Valery Falkov. And if not for the scandal, then he would have to rake this blockage as his own. Now there is a chance for the operational correction of the scheme, but this charge will still remain for science a mine not even very slowed. Everyone appreciated the abolition of the wild rules of communication between scientists with foreigners, but with the assessment of performance, everything is not as bad as it seems - everything is much worse. Nevertheless, something has already dawn. New Minister:
obviously wants to figure out the question
In many ways, it is already understanding better than its departments and
It makes a lot in organizational terms - as far as it is now possible in the realities of the management process.
The working group is thoroughly supplemented by scientists, especially from social and humanities. The willingness to refuse to unify the approach and exaggeration of the role of publications statistics is announced. And most importantly, systematic work has begun on the correction of the methodology with the elimination of the most significant absurdities and inconsistencies.
Moreover, it seems that even the idea of mutual, symmetrical control is met by understanding: if the department with such methodological baggage is taken to control the effectiveness of science, then at least no less reason to competently analyze the effectiveness of such control. In principle, this is a completely banal “assessment of the regulatory impact”, which has long been known in theory and even in our administrative practice.
Each law, each normative legal act begins with the approval of the concept as an integral part of the legislature. In the case of the KBPR and with all this bibliometric stress, such a concept is necessary:
see,
discuss with a professional community - and not only Russian,
Bring in line with modern principles and common sense.
With all due respect to the ministry and its working group, it is more correct to organize such a project on an independent “tripartite” site, which ensures parity contact of the departmental and academic administration with civil initiatives and independent experts in the field of science.
Nevertheless, this year it will be necessary to minimize the possible damage from the introduction of a new scheme by all possible means. The transfer of the introduction of this scheme would not have ruined anything for science, but it would be a hardware feat capable of building both departmental and academic bureaucracy, as well as everyone who wants to take up such affairs without knowledge of the materiel. Officials continue to hide behind the word “pilot”, confused in the testimony that the non -compliance of the plan supposedly will not have financial consequences. But then, according to all the strange results of this aerobatics, tough seats should not be done on institutions, but according to the department itself and performers, up to the return of money to the state.
Now all this crisis is somewhat pushed into the background with the tasks of zeroing coronavirus, etc. However, this is exactly the case when the scandal may be productive.