Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Ten Statistics Highlight State of Science under Putin

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 9 – Svetlana Saltanova, a journalist for the Higher School of Economics IQ portal, assembles ten statistics about Russian science during the last two decades which provide important insights into what has been happening to that branch under Vladimir Putin’s rule (iq.hse.ru/news/440848258.html).

            They include the following:

1.      The number of Russian scientists declined from 426,000 to 348,000.

2.      The number of scientific research institutes has fallen from 2686 to 1618 but some of those employed in them earlier a re now working in industry. There the number of research centers has grown from 33 to 44.

3.      Significant fractions of those involved in science have candidate of science or doctor of science degrees.

4.      A majority are now involved in technical sciences; the smallest share is in agricultural research.

5.      Russia now ranks ninth in the world in spending on scientific research, behind the US, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, India and Great Britain.

6.      The share of scientific research in Russia supported by the government has fallen slightly from 70.3 percent in 2010 to 66.3 percent now, and foreign support has fallen as well, from 3.5 percent to 2.3 percent over the same period.

7.      Only about 20 percent of Russian scientific discoveries are being applied in Russian industry.

8.      Citations to Russian scientific papers by scholars elsewhere is now below the international averages for such things.

9.      The number of graduate students (aspiranty) fell 23.8 percent between 2013 and 2019.

10.   Russians are slightly more inclined to follow the developments of Russian science than they were earlier. In 2014, only about one in four said he or she did. In 2019, surveys found, nearly one in three indicated he or she was doing so.

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