By Vestnik Kavkaza
On Saturday, more than 100 people who were dissatisfied with the law on the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) gathered to protest in the Novopushkinsky Square in Moscow. Recently, Vladimir Putin signed a law on the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the decree on the establishment of the agency for research organizations. According to the law, the Academy of Medical and Agricultural Sciences will now be attached to the Russian Academy of Sciences , and their active academics will automatically become members of the Academy of Sciences . The limit of the number of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences will be approved by the government on the proposal of the general meeting of the Academy.
Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov said that there are no reasons for dissatisfaction with the reform: "The law is fully consistent with the original concept of the bill, which was proposed by the Government of the Russian Federation. It was extremely important for us to resolve three main problems.
The first one is the separation of the expert functions of the scientific community from the management and funding of scientific research, because in the structure that existed in the Academy of Sciences in the last decade and which is still preserved today, the same people define research priorities, formulate the fundamental themes of work, conduct contests, determine the winners themselves, carry out this work and finance it. This permanent situation of conflict of interest should be removed, and the law resolves this issue.
The second important task that faced the government when it made the bill was to ensure the targeted nature of the use of the huge property which now belongs to the state academies of sciences. It was important to ensure not only the safety of one hundred percent of the property but also its targeted use solely in the interests of the development of scientific activity. This purpose is also achieved by the law .
Finally, the third important task is uniting the three academies – the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, to create preconditions for more active development of interdisciplinary research which often lie at the intersection. At the end of XX century, there was the information revolution and the development of technology in general associated with the explosive growth of information technology, communications technology. The beginning of the XXI century will be marked by the rapid development of the healthcare area, and it also makes the third basic position of the law highly relevant".
Suggestions on how to organize scientific activity after the adoption of the law on the reform of Russian Academy of Sciences were put forward by the chairman of the Council of Science under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Vice-Rector of Moscow State University Alexei Khokhlov. He believes it is important to minimize management risks: "To do this, the federal body of executive power should be special, and research coordination council of leading scientists should play a key role in it. Shortly I 'll call it "the Senate". Similar research coordination council exists in the Max Planck Society in Germany, although our system is much closer to the French system than to the German one. This should really be a board of leading scientists. It should include only those who are the scientists recognized by the international scientific community . "
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According to Khokhlov, the changes should be started with the first audit of the state of affairs in the institutes of the RAS: "It is possible to carry out audits of institutes, research groups, laboratories or employees. It is possible to do all of this. First, we suggest to reveal the core staff of the RAS , which can operate at the present level of world science. This is done in different ways in different sciences. The Senate should develop a methodology to assess this core staff, the leaders who are working at a global level, of course, together with the relevant departments of the RAS. We suggest that these employees should be granted a special status, now we conventionally call it a "permanent employee of the RAS", from the point of view that these employees should be on permanent positions. This status of "permanent employee of the RAS" must be renewed every 5 years. But if a person has been validated, he continues to be a permanent employee of the RAS. This status should be maintained during the transition from one institute of the RAS to another. These staff will create a core around which the further changes that will occur in the institutes of the RAS will gather".
According to Khokhlov, " if it is a constant position, there should be an age limit . We suggest that upon reaching the age of 70, a person should move to the position of "scientific consultant of the RAS" with almost the same wages. The only limitation will concern holding any scientific and organizational positions, but a consultant may participate and apply for grants, guide graduate students etc."
As for the audit of institutes and laboratories, in the opinion of Khokhlov , it is also necessary to hold it every five years: "It is important , and it will be one of the key functions of the Senate, that the commissions should include really top scientists . We assume that a large proportion, about half of these scientists may be foreign experts in this field, which would check the work of each institute and each laboratory. We have recently held a special meeting of the two Councils and dedicated it to this method, and our belief is that the institute itself is certainly good, but we cannot tell if it is reallly good or bad. Each institute has several good laboratories and a few bad laboratories. Talking about the performance of the institute is like talking about the average temperature in the hospital. We should assess laboratories, and we believe that each laboratory of each institute should be assessed during the audits".
