Evaluating the Evaluators in Russia: When Academic Citizenship Fails

Abstract

We examined the role of peer review in the quality assurance system developed for the regulation of higher education institutions in Russia. Given their negative attitude towards the state’s attempts to increase control over universities, how can the participation of academics in regulatory activity be explained? This essay applies resource allocation theory to suggest that engagement in academic service might depend on an individual’s performance of their core professional task: research. Results indicate that Russian academics who perform relatively poorly with respect to publications and citations in selective journals are more likely to engage in academic citizenship in the form of inspections.

Notes

1 For example, Bazhanov (2015); Piperski (2020); ‘O situatsii s Rosobrnadzorom’, Troitskii variant, 31 June 2018, available at: https://trv-science.ru/2018/07/o-situacii-s-rosobrnadzorom/, accessed 3 May 2021.

2 By naming academics as experts, we imply that this is a status they receive from the state agency. An expert of Rosobrnadzor is an official status that an academic receives after applying to the agency and passing a qualifying exam. Experts are not employed by Rosobrnadzor, as they remain full-time academics, participating occasionally in inspections of universities.

3 ‘Pochemu Rosobrnadzor zakryvaet khoroshie universitety? Kto imenno ikh proveryaet? Stoit li za etim korruptsiya?’, Meduza, 25 June 2018, available at: https://meduza.io/feature/2018/06/25/pochemu-rosobrnadzor-zakryvaet-horoshie-universitety-kto-imenno-ih-proveryaet-stoit-li-za-etim-korruptsiya, accessed 3 May 2021.

4 In 2018, prominent Russian scientists published a statement on the uneasy situation with Rosobrnadzor. The following quotation illustrates how they assess the quality of experts: ‘In addition, Rosobrnadzor entrusts this extremely responsible work to people who not only lack any authority in the academic community and have not proven their competence in anything, but are also caught in violations of academic ethics, in particular in the defending of plagiarised dissertations’ (‘O situatsii s Rosobrnadzorom’, Troitskii variant, 31 June 2018, available at: https://trv-science.ru/2018/07/o-situacii-s-rosobrnadzorom/, accessed 3 May 2021).

5 For example, Bazhanov (2015); Piperski (2020); ‘O situatsii s Rosobrnadzorom’, Troitskii variant, 31 June 2018, available at: https://trv-science.ru/2018/07/o-situacii-s-rosobrnadzorom/, accessed 3 May 2021.

6 Ukaz № 599 ‘O merakh po realizatsii gosudarstvennoi politiki v oblasti obrazovaniya i nauki’, 7 May 2012, available at: http://kremlin.ru/acts/bank/35263, accessed 3 May 2021.

7 The list of experts is updated on a regular basis (Reeestr attestovannykh ekspertov, privlekaemykh Rosobrnadzorom k meropriyatiyam po kontrolyu). The most recent version is available at: http://obrnadzor.gov.ru/otkrytoe-pravitelstvo/opendata/7701537808-experts/, accessed 3 May 2021.

8 In the Soviet period, research was separated from the higher education sector to the Academy of Science. The main function of the higher education sector was to provide manpower needs of the economy (Froumin et al. 2014).

9 Russian teachers and researchers are also faced with the pressure to publish when they defend their dissertations. To get through the candidate dissertation defence (first level) in the social sciences and humanities, a researcher has to publish at least three articles in an approved list of journals (two publications for hard sciences). For a doctoral dissertation defence (second level), the numbers are higher: 15 publications for the soft sciences and ten publications for hard sciences.

10 Aside from the Soviet legacy of concentrating research in the Academy of Science, low productivity can be explained by the absence of opportunities to develop a career by moving between institutions. For Russian universities, a high rate of academic ‘inbreeding’ is the norm: as of 2015, 72% of all Russian academics worked at the same university where they had started their academic careers (Sivak & Yudkevich 2015, p. 136). Moreover, Sivak and Yudkevich (2015) show that even the leading universities tend to hire their own graduates. Russian academics can spend their whole academic careers at one institution, even if their contracts are legally temporary. This means it is not necessary to build up a CV because jobs are secure and opportunities for movement are limited.

11 The latest available version with information about an affiliation and position is the list version published on 7 September 2016. More recent lists of experts omit information that allows one to identify a person precisely.

12 The list of authors is created by RISC in two ways. First, an author can register even without publications. Second, a profile is created automatically when a publication is registered on the database (Moskaleva et al. 2018). To construct the sample, we used both types of profiles. This allowed us to include in the sample academics who had not published but who were registered on the database.

13 For more details see, ‘Interfeis dlya predstavitelya organizatsii’, available at: http://elibrary.ru/projects/science_index/info_org.pdf, accessed 3 May 2021.

14 Some university faculty members are not listed in the RISC. However, the same is true for experts: only 544 out of the 788 experts on the list were found in the RISC. There is no evidence suggesting that a systematic bias exists between the two samples with respect to their presence in the RISC.

15 The Higher Attestation Commission is a national government agency that regulates awarding of academic degrees. The primary function of the Commission is to coordinate Dissertation Councils in Russian universities and research institutes. For more information see ‘Polozhenie o Vysshey attestatsionnoi komissii pri Ministerstve nauki i vysshego obrazovaniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, 2 March 2016, available at: https://vak.minobrnauki.gov.ru/about#tab=_tab:polojenie∼, accessed 7 May 2021.

16 The annual evaluation collects information on a few dozen indicators, grouped into six main categories such as education (average university entrance exam score), research (R&D spending), international activities (share of international students), financial stability (revenue per faculty member), infrastructure (total floor area of laboratories per student), and employment of students. The key indicators are not integrated indexes but are based on a single variable from the relevant group. To be labelled as an effective institution, a university has to meet a specified threshold on at least four indicators (Guba et al. 2020).

17 The ‘5–100’ Project was launched in 2012 to improve the international competitiveness of a handful of Russian universities. The primary goal of the project reflects the ambition to ensure that at least five Russian universities would be among the top universities according to leading international rankings by 2020 (Shibanova et al. 2018). The project is not the first attempt by the government to support a group of leading universities. Since 2004, special programmes have been implemented to shape elite universities (Platonova & Semyonov 2018). The 5–100 Project is modelled on excellence initiatives in higher education that have been launched around the world (Froumin & Lisyutkin 2018). Prior to this initiative, given the historical concentration of research in the Academy of Sciences, there was no official effort to promote research in universities (Froumin & Lisyutkin 2018). Preliminary results of the 5–100 Project are discussed in Matveeva et al. (2021).

18 It is important to note that universities have accomplished significant results partly by engaging in questionable practices such as publishing in ‘predatory’ journals (Guskov et al. 2018).

19 The indicator for education is based on measurement of selectivity through calculating the average Universal State Exam scores (equivalent to the GRE in the United States).

20 In 2012, the President signed so-called May decrees to set guidelines for the country development. Presidential decree No. 597 determined that salaries in the higher education sector had to reach 200% of the average salary in the region where the employing university is located. Ukaz № 597 ‘O meropriyatiyakh po realizatsii gosudarstvennoi sotsial’noi politiki’, 7 May 2012, available at: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/15233, accessed 3 May 2021.

21 Both universities are considered as an elite alternative to public institutions regarding the quality of education and research. For more information see Nechepurenko (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katerina Guba

Katerina Guba, European University at St Petersburg, Centre for Institutional Analysis of Science & Education, Gagarinskaya st. 6/1 A, St Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]

Angelika Tsivinskaya

Angelika Tsivinskaya, European University at St Petersburg, Centre for Institutional Analysis of Science & Education, Gagarinskaya st. 6/1 A, St Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]