THE IMPACT OF THE NEW FUNDING MECHANISMS ON RUSSIAN NATURAL SCIENCES
abstract

In such countries as Russia, USA and Great Britain, science is increasingly taking the shape of a commercial enterprise, and scholars, who regard their research results as potential commercial products, become entrepreneurs on "the marketplace of ideas". It is often claimed that this process of commercialization of science is bound to make scientists more productive and accountable and generate profitable linkages between the academic sector and the industry. In this paper I attempt to problematize this claim by undertaking economic analysis of some of the recent trends in the Russian scientific complex: namely, the introduction of new competitive funding mechanisms in Russian natural sciences. These mechanisms include, in particular, the distribution of grants through peer review, practiced by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and other foundations, and direct participation of Russian scientists in entrepreneurial activities.

After the end of the Cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have witnessed an unprecedented decline of Russian science’s economic, political and social status. It was expected that the new competitive funding mechanisms would help scientists adapt to the new economic conditions and would at the same time preserve the most viable and promising elements of Russian science.

However, although the new funding mechanisms in Russian natural sciences have alleviated some of the consequences of the drastic reduction of federal financing, these mechanisms cannot ensure Russian natural sciences’ long term effective work. This assertion is based on several arguments explaining why the peer review system of funds’ allocation works suboptimally when financing is going down and the scientific complex is getting commercialized, that is, results of scientific research are regarded as commodities intended for sale. I also show that some characteristics that have created a competitive advantage for Russian natural sciences within the world scientific community can be lost as a result of the introduction of the new funding mechanisms.

The paper is organized in the following way. In the first chapter, I compare the recent changes in political-economic climate in relation to science in Russia and the USA. I show that American science has entered a new regime under which science becomes commercialized. I point out that similar—but much more profound—processes can be observed in Russia as well.

Then I analyze the new funding mechanisms in Russian natural sciences and point to their serious shortcomings:

•  when grants become the only significant source of financing in science the number of research projects meriting financing exceed the number of projects that can be given financial support; therefore peer review can no longer serve as a satisfactory selection instrument; this problem is aggravated by the growth of specialization and interdisciplinary research in contemporary sciences;
• peer review often gives preference to scientists with good grant application skills, rather than to those with promising research projects;
• the grant system does not solve one of the major problems of the Russian natural sciences:  weakness of experimental base;
• the consequences of the commercialization in Russian natural sciences (declining communication among scientists, individualism, secrecy) contradicts the contemporary understanding of innovation processes;
• some of the changes in the nature of research and behavior of scholars in Russian natural sciences might destroy the culture (ethos) of the Russian science;
• the major palliatives aimed at smoothing the disadvantages of the Russian grant system (review by foreign peers, citation analysis) are unlikely to increase significantly the effectiveness of the grant system.

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