The State of Russian Science

Political turmoil, a brain drain of scientists and waning interest have transformed Russia from a nation that launched the first satellite into an increasingly minor player in the world of science, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Tuesday.

An analysis of research papers published by Russian scientists shows an almost across-the-board decrease, which reflects Russia's shrinking influence not only in science but in science-based industries such as nuclear power, the authors of the Thomson Reuters report said.

"Russia's research base has a problem, and it shows little sign of a solution," the report reads.

"Russia has been a leader in scientific research and intellectual thinking across Europe and the world for so long that it comes not only as a surprise but a shock to see that it has a small and dwindling share of world activity as well as real attrition of its core strengths."

[...]

Russian research accounts for about 2.6 percent of the world's papers published in journals indexed by Thomson Reuters over five years, the report found.

"For comparison, this is more than Brazil (102,000 papers, 2.1 percent of world) but less than India (144,000 papers, 2.9 percent) and far less than China (415,000 papers, 8.4 percent)."

The main focus was on physics and chemistry, with little research in agriculture or computer science.

[...]

Cuts in funding and an aging work force have not helped, the report said.

"By one 2007 account, a few of the best Russian research institutes have budgets for research amounting to 3-5 percent of comparably sized institutes in the United States," the report reads.

The average age for a member of the Russian Academy of Science is over 50, and the prestige of a field that gave birth to Sputnik as the ultimate expression of Cold War rivalry has plummeted. Just 1 percent of Russians polled in 2006 named science as a prestigious career.

Sad, isn't it?

To make things worse, this seems to be an xUSSR wide situation. In Ukraine, being a scientist was considered, frankly, pathetic. A business career or even a farmer was considered a preferable job. Scientists do not have any respect at all in my experience.