Events in Russia and the world. Analytical publications. Materials of press conferences. Video and photo reportsValery Falkov, the Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia, told TASS in an interview about whether Russian science has withstood the pressure of sanctions, whether it is worth punishing students for using artificial intelligence in their studies and whether sanctions have affected the development of Russian science.
— Valery Nikolaevich, good afternoon and happy Russian Science Day! Today is not an anniversary, but still a wonderful holiday. In your opinion, what are the main results of Russian science in 2022?— It was a difficult year, we all understand that.
Absolutely new challenges. I think the main result is that the entire research and development system has adapted to these new challenges quite successfully.
The fact that it is necessary to change the evaluation system of research work has been talked about for a long time, but last year it became obvious.
The situation with access to databases, the situation with scientific journals, with publications, and a whole series of other issues, no less significant — all this, so to speak, floated overnight. Which, of course, destabilized some of the teams in the beginning. But by the end of the year, we already had a general understanding of how the system had adapted. It is important.
At the same time, it should be noted that none of the initiatives, none of the plans that were originally at the start of the national project "Science and Universities", the State Scientific and Technological Development Program (did not stop — approx. TASS) — all these projects are being implemented successfully. I am also referring to the construction of the largest installations of the megascience class. This year we are setting ourselves a task — and I think we will successfully solve it — the launch of the NICA collider. In 2024, we plan to launch a synchrotron of the 4th generation "Siberian Ring Photon Source", or SKIF for short, in Novosibirsk. But in itself it's all very difficult — not only from the point of view of construction, but also from the point of view of structural. These are large science-intensive projects, and they implied quite serious cooperation. Nevertheless, we have revised a number of plans based on our own efforts — for example, one of the six SKIF stations was redesigned.
It's just what's on the surface. It is worth remembering projects or complexes of activities for the creation of youth laboratories. By the way, taking into account the difficult situation, we have corrected a lot in them. Firstly, they created twice as many as planned, which was very important in 2022. Secondly, the metrics for such laboratories have been changed. Simply put, if earlier we focused on scientific articles and publications, now, depending on the profile of the laboratory, we have chosen five main areas and prioritized them — new medicine, new energy, climate research, agriculture. In these areas, based on the profile of the youth scientific laboratory, we have determined what results we expect from them.
At the same time, I would like to say that we have launched four federal projects. The most significant of them, I think, is the project on civil instrumentation. We have set it up, launched it, and four of our leading universities are already actively engaged. The number of participants who will be involved in this project and the range of devices will expand. A separate project is the popularization of science.
— You mentioned megascience. And how are we currently building cooperation with traditional foreign scientific partners? — The situation develops in different ways.
Nevertheless, we consider it important that we have been preserved in the CERN project, which is considered the most important project for everyone involved in nuclear physics. And the second very important point is that we have begun to pay more attention to the development of international collaborations in relation to our megascience class installations. It is the second year that we have been actively discussing the participation in the associate membership of a number of States in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
— JINR, in principle, is now one of the flagships of international cooperation.— Absolutely right!
JINR, SIC "Kurchatov Institute" are two of these largest sites, each of which is the holder of a number of megasience class installations. If earlier we were mainly participants in other collaborations, today we focus on making international research programs representative enough for our installations. And JINR is the first in this direction, it is now actively forming such a program. After him, the Research Institute of Nuclear Physics named after Budker (Novosibirsk). So the appearance of our own unique installations makes Russian science even more attractive and allows us to create new collaborations.
— I can't help but ask a question on a fashionable topic today. One of the students wrote his thesis using a neural network. In your opinion, is it worth applying any measures to those who use neural networks to write diplomas? Or is it basically just one of the help tools? — I think there should be no negative consequences for the student.
He just tested the system for strength, in my opinion. This is the first moment. And the second very important point: these kinds of situations that happen suddenly — although it seems that artificial intelligence, the neural network and its capabilities have been known for a long time, show that universities need to be rebuilt. At the very least, it suggests that it is necessary to change the approach to tasks. It is necessary to formulate the task in such a way that only the student can solve it. Or do a combined task involving a direct examination of the student's knowledge. Well, the students have always been inventive and have always been looking for options to follow the path of least resistance. This student is no different from those who were in our time. At the same time, if you look, he told everything quite conscientiously, how he did it. And why, by the way, he did it.
— A painful question — Russian scientific journals. Admittedly, they are not as authoritative as the international journals in which our scientists are published. Will they ever turn into really authoritative publications for the whole world? — Good question.
I would still first note that there are many scientific journals in Russia, and some of them - even if not the smallest — are quite authoritative. In general, they have been recognized since the Soviet era. You know that the holders of these journals are the Russian Academy of Sciences, together, as a rule, with specialized institutes. There are more than a hundred such journals, which are not only for internal use in Russia, but they are recognized abroad, translated and have a good citation index, among other things. But let's still look at these things fairly. It depends not only on the quality of publications and journals, but also on how they are promoted, and which networks and aggregators they are included in. We understand that this world is quite tightly monopolized, the world of scientific journals — strangers do not go there. There are several aggregator platforms that, in fact, set the tone in this direction. Therefore, the way out is to focus on the quality of publications, actively translate and promote our journals abroad. To implement this purposefully, centrally, as part of state policy. And we are doing this work together with several sites — for example, the day before yesterday we met with the directors of academic institutes of the humanities. And we discussed just the question about the fact that INION could become such a platform promoting Russian journals and research results — Russian monographs, including in various countries. And it seems to me that this is a good example. We are also attracting the Russian Center for Scientific Information, now reformed by the RFBR, since it is the organizer of subscriptions for all universities and institutes without exception, and it, together with the Nauka publishing house, will deal with issues, including journal policy.
On the Day of Russian Science, I would like to wish both young and established researchers inspiration, good health, success and reliable comrades-partners who, despite any changes in the political conjuncture, are friends with them, respecting them, first of all, for their professional qualities and for their achievements in the scientific field.
— Thank you for the conversation and once again happy holidays!Interviewed by Andrey Reznichenko