2023 Volume 6 Issue 4 (Published 20 July 2024)

Dear colleagues,  

The July heat turned out to be an excellent accelerator of publication activity. Of course, we must also take into account the fact that scientists generally go on vacation in the summer. And the desire to relax with a clear conscience, i.e. having fulfilled all publication plans, is becoming a good tradition that ensures the successful implementation of both grants and projects.

In general, of course, assessing the importance of institutes by publication activity, and the success of scientists by Hirsch indices is a so-so idea, but when it's an official policy directly affecting funding, it is simply harmful. Since the motivation part of any project now includes relevance and scientific groundwork, assessed in turn by how many people are already working on this topic, how deeply you have developed it before submitting the project, and how much you are cited, is it any wonder that the younger generation of scientists are stuck in mosaic thinking, seeing grant support as the only source of funding?

At the same time, it must be acknowledged that, despite all the general negativity that such a system for assessing the effectiveness brought to Russian science, it played an important organizing role—it forced Russian scientists to write articles, which in Soviet times they only did every once in a while. However, further use of these indicators as a system for monitoring the expenditure of budget funds will lead us far away from the priorities of the Strategy of Scientific and Technological Development, the Program of Fundamental Scientific Investigations, and other domestic goal-setting documents.

The upcoming changes in the management of the fundamental research program still do not promise making the selection of research goals any easier. During this organizational chaos, the task of choosing priorities should be taken on by the Scientific Councils working for the specialized Departments. How not to remember A. N. Nesmeyanov with a kind word, who put in order the academic structures that ensure the development of priorities and communication between the universities and industry science, and production. All we have to do is to dust off the constituent documents, hold reporting and organizational meetings of the Bureau of the Departments, indicate clear support for the journals overseeing the field of each scientific Council, and select the main conference for each Council, which will bring to the scientific community the most relevant areas of research in the interests of the country, and have them voiced by the most authoritative scientists from among the members of the Scientific Councils—plenary speakers of the conferences. These tools were created as the mechanisms of direct communication and feedback between the Academy and the scientific audience, regardless of its administrative subordination. It is important that these mechanisms work through explanation and persuasion instead of administrative and financial pressure, which the current structures rely on.

From this point of view, the Editorial board of "INEOS OPEN" will be guided by the decisions of two specialized Scientific Councils: the Council on Organic Chemistry (and primarily its section on organoelement chemistry) and the Council on High-Molecular Compounds. In this regard, the conference issues, which we discussed in detail in the previous editorial, are a trial run in the matter of our interaction with the Scientific Councils of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In editorial articles, we are prepared to summarize the research topics that have been voiced and discuss preferences for publications in the selected areas. That is, our Journal is ready to guide the members of specialized institutes to conduct research in the most relevant areas of chemistry designated by the Scientific Councils. In this way, we hope to make our organizational contribution to the implementation of the methodological guidance of our Department by specialized organizations, especially for young research teams.