Experts who are analyzing the situation in Russian science believe that it hasn’t recovered from the collapse of the USSR yet. It is difficult to reform the scientific and educational system quickly, but the critical situation in the sphere of research is being improved. According to Dmitry Livanov, Minister of Education and Science, for the first time in 15 years, an increase has been recorded in the number of people who are professionally engaged in research: “In the 1990s there was a very strong failure that was associated with the failure of financing and with the loss of interest of young people in professional careers in the field of science, with the loss of motivation, a significant flow of the people that were engaged in science, a flow to other areas and to other countries. Since then, every year there was a decrease in the number of people who are engaged in research in Russia. And so, in 2014, for the first time in 15 years, an increase was recorded in this number. This, we believe, is a favorable factor, an indication that state policy in the sphere of science is carried out exactly in the direction of development, in the direction of strengthening the human capital of our Russian science.”
Livanov noted the accelerated influx of young scientists, young researchers to Russian science: “The inflow, rejuvenation is mainly concentrated in the university, in the high school science sector. Unfortunately, the sector of the research organizations, especially organizations of the FASN, is not showing such dynamics. Its conversion is still in a frozen state there.”
The Minister says that the productivity of Russian science is also growing: “If in 2013 there were 33 thousand publications in the journals indexed by the Web of Science database, there were almost 37 thousand in 2014. The growth of exactly Russian publications is outpacing the worldwide growth in scientific publications, which means that Russia's share in the total amount of the global publications has increased.”
The total funding of science, so-called domestic expenditure on research and development, which includes budgetary and non-budgetary expenditures, grew by almost 100 billion rubles. This increase is more than 10%, from $750 billion in 2013 to 850 in 2014. This is very serious and, pay attention, not extensive, namely strong growth. And as a result, a very important indicator that is called the science intensity of GDP has grown. This is actually the ratio of the domestic expenditure on research and development to the gross domestic product. It also reached its maximum value during the last years, 1.19%. For example, I can say that in 2011 it was 1.09% and then 1.13%, and that in 2014, 1.19%. This growth was achieved mainly in the higher education sector (27% for a year), and the business sector (increment of 24%),” according to Livanov.
He says that “industry is beginning to invest more and more, invest in research and development. This, too, we believe, is an important signal, as, indeed, the underfunding of science from the industry, the lack of a clear order from the high-tech industries, was one of the disasters of our science in the past two decades.We hope that these figures that were recorded in 2014 will be the beginning of a long-term positive trend, a positive tendency in the development of our science.”
