HSE Support for Research in 2023: New Bonuses and Competitions

In 2022, our staff have faced and coped with great academic challenges across the university. We have managed to maintain our high academic standards, and as of November 2022 (compared to 2021) the expected number of publications by HSE employees in indexed journals has continued to grow. Almost all research teams have been preserved, and HSE scholars continue to conduct fundamental and applied research at an international level.

As a result of the need to respond to new challenges, several important decisions have recently been made. HSE Vice Rector Dmitry Dagaev shares these innovations and explains how they will affect the HSE academic community.

New Academic Bonus

At the December meeting of the HSE Academic Council, it was decided to create a new academic bonus for publication in journals from list B. This list includes 186 journals, most of them being leading Russian journals in relevant scientific fields.

The new academic bonus will be available to teachers on many different professional trajectories — not only academic, but also educational, methodological and practice-oriented. In addition, this bonus will be available to full-time researchers and administrators. Thus, those who teach a lot, conduct joint work with students and doctoral students, and publish their work in leading Russian journals, while maintaining a high level of academic performance will be able to receive support.

The rules for assigning this bonus will be similar to the rules for assigning the bonus for articles published in journals from list A. Researchers who have publications in both list A and list B will be able to choose the academic bonus that they wish to receive. Representatives of the HSE Academic Fund will contact those who apply for several bonuses at once in the summer of 2023 and ask them to choose their preferred option.

© HSE University

In order to qualify for the new bonus, employees won’t need to submit any special applications. They should add publications in journals from List B for 2021-2022 to their personal pages by February 1, 2023 and verify them. The bonus will be paid starting from September 1, 2023. According to preliminary estimates, about 200 HSE employees should be able to apply for it. At the same time, there are no plans to reduce the size of the existing bonuses.

Еще одно новшество, которое также было принято Ученым советом НИУ ВШЭ в конце декабря, — введение минимального размера академической надбавки за статьи в журналах из списка А.

The Minimum Bonus for Articles in Journals from List A

Another innovation adopted by HSE Academic Council is the introduction of a minimum academic bonus for articles in journals from List A.

Starting from 2023, the minimum academic bonus for a researcher working at the HSE University full-time will be 20% of the base amount of the bonus (20 thousand roubles per month in Moscow). This amount may vary pro-rata if the employee doesn’t work full-time.

How to Deal with Politically Motivated Refusals to Publish

In 2022, there were a few situations where some of our authors received politically motivated refusals to publish their articles in leading journals. So far, there have only been a handful of these refusals, but the university will pay close attention to all such cases. In this regard, the HSE Managing Committee for Scientific Research has decided to create a commission to consider appeals from managers of fundamental research projects on issues related to politically motivated rejection of publications (the mechanism for applying to the commission will be determined in early 2023).

If researchers are asked to withdraw their affiliation with HSE University or gratitude to the HSE Basic Research Programme for support, or if they encounter a refusal to publish on the basis that the author works at a Russian university, the authors will be able to apply to the new commission, which will analyse the editorial board's response and consider the possibility of taking such work into account through separate competitive and evaluation procedures available at HSE University.

Authors can inform the HSE Scientometrics Centre about such cases. At the same time, if you face such discrimination, we recommend trying to submit an article to ‘neighboring’ journals on the same subject.

Each case will be considered individually. I hope the number of such cases will still be small.

Competition for the Launch of Laboratories

In 2023, the HSE will also hold a competition for the launch of laboratories. Applications will be accepted in the spring.

This competition was held for the first time in 2018: 10 new laboratories were created (bringing the total to 51). After two subsequent iterations of the competition in 2019 and 2020, we decided to take a break: we felt we needed to accumulate new creative ideas. And now we feel that we’ve built up this potential. So once again, you can prepare for the competition: think over possible research topics for a future laboratory, and create a team with students and doctoral students to submit an application.

Following the results of the competition, each winning laboratory will be allocated a research budget of up to 4 million roubles per year (for 2023, the budget will be reduced in proportion to the time of project implementation, given that the projects will not be launched at the beginning of the year). The laboratories will have a three-year reporting cycle, at the end of which we’ll evaluate the results. There are no thematic restrictions, representatives of all scientific fields will be invited to participate in the competition. Furthermore, for the first time, applications from regional university campuses will be able to receive support.

© HSE University

Our laboratories focus primarily on working with students. For many students, working in a laboratory is the first research step they take in their academic life, and this form of interaction allows many students of different fields and majors to be involved in research. In general, we are satisfied with both the content of the laboratories' work and the results of our project implementation, and as a result, most laboratory projects have been extended for the next three-year cycle.

Extension of the Current Lists of HSE Journals

Another important decision is the extension of the existing lists of HSE journals for one year. This decision was made by the HSE Academic Fund Council.

When in 2019 we started creating lists of journals not related to quartiles, we expected to approve them for three years. Once every three years, these lists would need to be revised due to the growth of the academic reputation of some new journals and, perhaps, on the contrary, the exclusion or recategorization of journals that had lowered their standards of academic work. The decision on the inclusion, exclusion or recategorization of a journal is made according to both scientometric expertise and expert opinions in relevant areas.

In 2022, the HSE Scientometric Centre, unfortunately, faced up to the fact that the level of response to the request for the examination of journals makes it impossible to conduct a broad campaign to change the lists. At the same time, we will not shy away from this task in the future.

The decision to extend the current lists of HSE journals was also taken due to the fact that a new academic bonus has been created for articles in journals from List B. We hope that this will support our authors in conditions when some of them may potentially have difficulties with publications in leading international journals.

Thus, the current lists remain relevant until the end of 2024, authors can focus on them and be sure that, in all HSE campaigns up to and including 2024, articles will be appropriately taken into account when assigning academic bonuses, evaluating publication activity, etc. The Academic Fund Council will return to the changes in the lists of journals for 2025-2027 at the end of 2023.

January 16, 2023