Russian government bars its scientists from international conferences

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The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation said that Russian scientists won't be going to international conferences this year. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has strained the relationships between Russian scientists and the international research community.

According to a recap sent through the Ministry's Telegram channel, Minister Valery Falkov said during a meeting with universities that scientific schools should no longer emphasize when publications are included in international scientific databases.

Scientists aren't banned from publishing research in international journals that are in the two databases, but they won't use them as indicators of the quality of the work. The two databases are major sources of scientific information and have metrics that are widely used to evaluate the relative importance of scientific research.

Russian research institutions have been trying to make them more internationally competitive for nearly a decade. The country recruited international scholars and pushed for Russian scientific organizations to vet their work based on metrics in the Web of Science and Scopus. Data from those databases can be used to develop lists of the world's best universities. According to one analysis, publications from Russian scientists in international journals went up after that push.

Two weeks ago, the Russian government decided to stop rating scientific research more highly if it was published in Scopus-indexed journals. The government said it would no longer require research done with grants from government research programs to be published.

Clarivate, which runs Web of Science, said it wouldn't evaluate new journals from Russia and other countries that support Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

Russian research organizations have had their ties cut by other research organizations. The European Organization for Nuclear Research said that it wouldn't work with the Russian Federation. The International Congress of Mathematicians will be held in July rather than in Russia.

Many Ukrainian scientists have been calling on journals to bar research from Russian scientists, but Nature has pushed back against a publishing boycott, saying that it does not want to block scholarly exchange. The Journal of Molecular Structure is one of a few journals that have said they will not accept work from Russian institutions.

Russian scientists should not be invited to international conferences according to Ukrainian researchers.