Russia Bans Scientists From Attending International Conference


 Russian scientists will not participate in this year's international conference. The Russian government, through the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, prohibits its scientists from attending international conferences.

The decision was taken regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This situation appears to be straining relations between Russian scientists and the international research community.


Minister of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Valery Falkov also said during a meeting with a number of universities, that scientific schools should no longer emphasize when publications are indexed through two major international scientific databases.



Scientists are not barred from publishing research in international journals indexed in the two databases, the Web of Science and Scopus, but will not rely on either as an indicator of quality of work. Both databases are a major source of scientific information and have widely used metrics to evaluate the relative importance of scientific research.


Quoted from The Verge, Thursday (24/3/2022) this is really unfortunate. The move stands in stark contrast to nearly a decade of efforts to make Russian research institutes more internationally competitive.


The country is actively recruiting international scholars and encouraging Russian scientific organizations to examine the work of their researchers against metrics on the Web of Science and Scopus.


International rating organizations can use data from these databases to develop their list of the world's best universities. Publications of Russian scientists in international journals increased between 2013 and 2016 after the effort.


Two weeks ago, the Russian government decided to stop ranking scientific research higher if it was published in the indexed journals Web of Science and Scopus. The government also said it would no longer require research conducted on grants from government research programs to be published in indexed journals.


Clarivate, which runs the Web of Science, has closed its Russia office and said it would not evaluate new journals from Russia and Belarus (which supported Russia in its invasion of Ukraine).


Other research organizations have also cut ties with Russian research organizations. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said it would not cooperate with the Russian Federation. The International Congress of Mathematicians will be held almost in July rather than in Russia as scheduled.


Many Ukrainian scientists have spent the last few weeks calling for journals to ban research from Russian scientists, but leading journals such as Nature have resisted a publishing boycott. Nature says they don't want to block scientific exchange.


But several journals, including the Journal of Molecular Structure, said they would not accept work from Russian institutions. Ukrainian researchers also said Russian scientists should not be invited to international conferences.

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