The Results of Monitoring of Russian Centers for Shared Use of Scientific Equipment (Core Research Facilities) and Unique Scientific Installations (Large Research Facilities) for 2014

A network of Core Research Facilities (CKP) and Large research facilities (UNU) has been developing in Russia. The government provides active legal and financial support to CKP and UNU. A significant portion of them is located in organizations managed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia. Yearly monitoring of CKP and UNU activities provides information for assessment of their capacity and effectiveness. In the course of analysis, high dependence of Russia’s Core Research Facilities on foreign manufacturers has been revealed. In CKP subordinated to the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations (FASO) research equipment has been renovated at slower rates than in the whole sample. In contrast, productivity in the group of FASO CKP is higher than on average. The work load of expensive research equipment used for the benefit of external users is low. Most of the articles in physics and chemistry were published in journals ranked low in Web of Science database. The number of articles published in foreign high-ranking journals is 2-2.5 times less than in low-ranking. Core Research Facilities do not provide comprehensive information about their services to potential clients. Urgent steps for updating their website content are needed. Large research facilities deal mainly with basic research. Most of them belong to research organizations managed by FASO. Most of articles prepared with the use of UNU are published in low-ranking journals. UNU are under-represented on Internet. The situation is fairly dramatic in comparison with that of CKP. The author suggests to use the results of monitoring in the course of CKP/UNU Development Roadmap design and government financial support planning.