Open Science in Russia or the Enforcement of Scientific Creativity

Abstract

The executive power of our country, by the statement of Deputy Prime Minister D. Chernyshenko on March 7, 2022, recognized that the current system of management of domestic science does not meet the national interests of Russia. The concept of open science implies not only open access to the latest achievements of world science, which can be achieved with the development of modern means of communication, but also the fulfillment of a number of principles of honest scientific research. One can agree that easy access to theresults of domestic scientific research may be contrary to the national interest of the country. But this problem is probably quite solvable through scientific and technological expertise at the stage of preparing material for publication. The main problem, in our opinion, is related to the fact that numerous scientometric indicators of “successful” scientific work transform the creative research process into an operational type of intellectual activity. In our opinion, the problem of the examination of a scientist’s scientific activity should be reconsidered. The purpose of expertise should be to assess the quality of scientific work: the personal contribution to the scientific problem being developed; reliability and sufficiency of the data obtained andfor the conclusions formulated; reproducibility of observation results; absence of plagiarism and duplication of publications; depth of understanding of the scientific problem; degree of involvement of the researcher in the creative work of the whole scientific team within a given scientific or technological topic. Only examination of the attitude to creative scientific work within the framework of periodic certification process can prevent domestic science from becoming just a means of earning money.