Medical Science in Russia: we are waiting for a change
Mednovosti publishes an article by the chief specialist of the Central Research Institute of Organization and Informatization of Healthcare, General Director of the publishing house "Manager of Healthcare", Doctor of Biological Sciences Natalia Kurakova.
What awaits our medical science?A truly revolutionary modernization of the knowledge generation sector has begun in Russia.
Its purpose is to conduct a comprehensive assessment (audit) of the potential and effectiveness of all existing state scientific institutions and universities. This procedure should be completed no later than 2012.
The first steps in this direction have already been taken. Firstly, the methodology has been approved, according to which all universities and research institutes will be divided into three categories: strong, stable and weak. Secondly, the main criteria for evaluating the effectiveness are highlighted: international recognition of the scientific results obtained, as well as the activity of institutes and universities in commercializing the objects of intellectual property being created. According to the results of such an audit in 2011-2014, about 10-15 percent of organizations will be "redesigned" and about 20 percent more will be "partially restructured".
The country does not need such scienceThe country's leadership back in 2009, when this methodology was being developed, actually told all of us: "The country does not need such a science" ... One can understand such a statement of the question.
For example, Rosfinnadzor inspections conducted in 2010 estimated the damage from inefficient use of government spending on R&D in 2009 at 480 million rubles.
The examination of scientific reports has shown that they do not represent any scientific value: their content is irrelevant and does not correspond to the set goals of R&D. When checking reports through the Anti-Plagiarism system, it turned out that the authors either used someone else's text without making references, or from 5 to 58 percent of the text consists of quotations and excerpts from Russian legislation. The total amount of inefficient use of budget money due to the reprinting of other people's author's texts in scientific reports, according to Rosfinnadzor, is 157.3 million rubles.
Another problem pointed out by Rosfinnadzor is the lack of patented R&D results. In 2009, 1,586 state contracts worth 6.2 billion rubles were concluded, their result was only two software developments worth 30 million rubles, subject to legal protection, and even those were not registered with Rospatent.
At the end of 2010, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences ranked 668th in the Scimago ranking of scientific organizations in the world, and the share of Russian articles in the global publication flow on medicine was 3 percent!
In 2008, the report of the US National Science Foundation for the first time included information on the number of the most highly cited articles by scientists from around the world. This database also includes data on organizations where the authors of the most highly cited publications work. RAMS for the period from January 1, 2000 to October 31, 2010 is represented by only 20 (twenty) highly cited articles and ranks 1109th out of 4339 highly cited organizations in the world. But it is according to the citation ratings that the lists of nominees for the Nobel Prizes are formed.
What they want to doIn the conditions of globalization of science, which we are witnessing today, the national parochialism of science is unacceptable.
That is why scientometric indicators have appeared among the quantitative indicators of the draft Strategy of Innovative Development of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2020:
• the share of Russian researchers in the global number of publications in scientific journals should increase to 5 percent in 2020 (in 2008 – 2.48 percent);
• the average citation of scientific papers of Russian researchers should increase to 5 references per article in 2020 (in 2009 – 2.4 references per article);
• at least 5 Russian universities should be among the 200 leading world universities, according to international rankings (in 2009 - none);
• the number of patents registered annually by Russian individuals and legal entities in the patent offices of the EU, USA and Japan should exceed 2.5-3 thousand in 2020 (63 in 2008).
The value of a scientific article today is determined by two parameters – its accessibility and citation, as well as the value of the journals in which these articles are published. The term "mass grave", which is used by many so-called VAKOV magazines, which have a circulation of 300 copies and which no one reads, seems to be a thing of the past.
At the end of December 2010, an interview with its chairman, Mikhail Kirpichnikov, was posted on the website of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation, which states: "by 2013-2014, we will abandon the list of the Higher Attestation Commission altogether. The fact that there will be no "WAC list” has already been decided. Public citation databases will take its place. Why didn't we do it right away? Because in these international databases of citations from the more than two thousand Russian journals discussed, there could be only 300-400. A scandal!"
However, you can argue with these figures. In fact, they are even lower. According to a study published in January 2010 by Thomson Reuters, Russia accounts for only 2.6 percent of scientific articles published in 2004-2008 in journals indexed by the world's largest Web of Science network. This is less than China (8.4 percent) and India (2.9 percent), and only slightly more than the Kingdom of the Netherlands (2.5 percent). Moreover, Russia has not seen an increase in the number of publications since 1981, while India, China and Brazil are experiencing rapid growth in the production of "scientific products".
The second recognized international bibliometric system Scopus today processes no more than 12 percent of the total publication flow of scientific Russia. For example, there are only 150 Russian journals in the Web of Science for 2010, 249 in the Scopus database, 59 in Medline (PubMed), 56 in Chemical Abstracts, 32 in MathSciNet.
According to our data, the Russian medical periodicals Web of Science with rare exceptions (8 journals) practically "does not see". The Russian medical periodicals are much more widely represented in Scopus (44 journal titles are currently being processed and in addition to them there are still archival issues of 20 titles).
According to ESI, domestic publications on life sciences are particularly far behind the leading countries of the world in their influence. If, according to the data for 1993-2002, domestic publications occupy the 15th place in the world in citation, then in biology and biochemistry, domestic publications are on the 17th place, in clinical medicine – on the 37th place, in pharmacology and toxicology – on the 31st, in immunology – on the 33rd.
Today, it is clear to all of us that such characteristics of our scientists as "the author of more than 600 works" should become a thing of the past. And not because these publications have no value, but because they cannot be found either in libraries or in Russian and international indexed databases.
Try typing in the "Author" field in the electronic catalog of the National Medical Library the name of the researcher, "the author of more than 600 works". You will get 30-40 links at best. And where to look for the rest? Often the author himself will not answer this question. Then who were these 600 publications written for?
A list of Russian medical journals in the SCOPUS database and the Web of Science database, ratings of the most cited Russian medical periodicals, the names of medical scientists with the most cited international publications can be found on the website of the Health Manager magazine.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.02.2011