The CIS research area development

The Russian language as a system basis of scientific communication in the CIS is well organized. After the recession in the transformation and self-determination period in our countries, there comes the time of scientific development. The scientific relations previously established between researchers provide the basis for scientific development in the Russian Federation and neighboring countries.

Within the framework of the project called "Russian language as a factor of the CIS research area development: analysis, problems and prospects", 286 scientists from the CIS countries were surveyed at the Tver State University (the project implementation is supported by the RF Ministry of Education). More than a third of them communicate with their colleagues only in Russian, 57% use Russian along with the native language. More than 70% of respondents publish reports and articles in Russian every year. Scientific events are annually held in Russian in 75% of the companies where they work. At that, only 10% of respondents take part in collaborative research with Russian colleagues. The reason is a limited number of competitions, which are held together with responsible funds or public authorities of Russia and the CIS countries.

A survey of more than 500 official websites of universities and research organizations of the CIS countries showed that about 78% of Internet resources are completely or partially translated into Russian, while the content in the English language is only 66%.

The research of publications and patent activities of scientists from the CIS countries allowed to find out that the number of publications in the Russian language in bibliometric databases of Scopus, Web of Science and RSCI has increased. There is an increase in collaborative publications of Russian researchers with their colleagues from the CIS countries. There is a notable increase in the number of patents issued by the Eurasian patent organization, where Russian-language databases of intellectual property objects are used.
A popular form of knowledge transfer is the collaboration in the field of attestation of higher qualified scientific personnel and foundation of examining committees in the CIS territory, although the requirement to write the text of the thesis research in the Russian language has not remained in any country of the CIS. In Belarus, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, an applicant chooses to write and defense a thesis research in native, Russian or other foreign languages established by law. However, many applicants for the degrees of Candidate and Doctor of Sciences from the CIS countries prefer to study and defend theses research in Russia; thus, the number of postgraduates from the CIS countries has increased by more than 90% in two years.

In general, more than 80% of the scientific and educational community’s representatives from the CIS countries agreed on the need for further development of scientific communications in Russian, which demonstrates the importance of the research that drew public attention to the problem of Russian-speaking research area in the CIS countries.