The Russian Academy of Sciences considers Academy president (in the photo) Yury Osipov's chairmanship compensation for the presence of government officials on the coordinating council.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Science Gets Outside Management
The government has approved a program for fundamental scientific research by the state academies of sciences through 2012, with budgeting of 253 billion rubles. The academies will be able to define their own research priorities, but they will have a financial controller in the form of a coordinating council made up of both academic leaders and government officials that will manage financial flows.
The Russian Academy of Sciences will receive about 160 billion rubes of the budgeted funds. Nanotechnology research, which was expected to dominate the list of priority areas in the government program, is placed on par with other aspects of scientific research. Nanotechnology research will receive additional funding from the budget of the Rosnanotekh state corporation.
Budgeting will now be by project and will be granted on a competitive basis. Criteria for a project's budgeting will include number of citations in the scientific literature, ability to attract extra-budgetary funding and expert assessment. Academies will be required to make agreements with banks to financial management.
The introduction of a coordinating committee is the real innovation in the program, and marks the end of a two-year struggle between the Academy of Sciences and the government over financial control of the Academy. The academicians were able to block the inclusion of outside financial control in the Academy's charter. The Academy of Sciences has also been made an independent object of financing in the state budget. However, outside financial control has been written into the government program of the Academy. The chairman of the coordinating council will be president of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yury Osipov.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 17, 2008
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