2024: The Year of Completion of the National Project “Science” (“Science and Universities”)

In December 2024, the national project “Science and Universities” was completed. Its main achievements include the scientific equipment upgrade program. At the same time, the continuing negative trends noted in the Presidential Decree “On the Scientific and Technological Development Strategy of the Russian Federation” (No. 145 of February 28, 2024) are alarming. They include the concentration of science and technology potential in a limited number of regions of the country. Taking into account the demographic situation in Russia, the task of rejuvenation of research personnel adopted in the national project “Science and Universities”, which has been continued in the programs for the development of research organizations, set up by the end of 2024, will lead, in our opinion, to the strengthening of this negative trend. This is also facilitated by the logic of the development of modern science, which obeys the law formulated by V.V.Nalimov back in the 1960s: every 10 years the amount of scientific information doubles in the branches of natural sciences. The limited capacity of the human brain to process new information forces researchers to narrow the field of their scientific interests. But even here, the information flood, reinforced by the products of “paper factories” producing fake science, poses intractable problems of analyzing new achievements. The business of publishing services is already entering the automatic mode of production of pseudoscientific output, and as long as the evaluation of a researcher’s performance is determined by the number of articles, the negative trends noted by the President of Russia will only intensify.

national project “Science and Universities”, scientometrics, demography, rejuvenation of research personnel, law of scientific information, fake science, paid publishing services, V. V. Nalimov