The Ministry of Education and Science ensured the connection of more than 100 Ukrainian universities and scientific institutions of the Ministry of Education and Culture to international scientific databases at the expense of the state budget. In particular, 68 institutions gained access to the Scopus database, and 64 to the Web of Science.
The connection was made through the State Scientific and Technical Library, which allowed as a wholesale buyer to reduce the cost of the subscription.
"In Ukraine, until now, only a few of the largest universities could afford access to these resources at their own expense. MES decided to change this situation and financially support a centralized subscription to enable as many scientists as possible to use such databases. The most popular in the scientific world are Web of Science and Scopus, which have become not just databases of scientific editions and publications, but information platforms that have many additional useful analytical services. Scientists really need high-quality information search and analysis resources," said Dmytro Cheberkus, director of the Department of Scientific and Technical Development of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
To select universities and institutions, the Ministry held a competition. There were three selection criteria:
– Number of scientific and scientific-pedagogical employees (characterizes the scale of the institution);
– Amount of involved financial resources for scientific research and development (most generally characterizes the activity and motivation for scientific activity of the staff of the institution);
– The number of scientific publications in Scopus and Web of Science (to some extent characterizes the quality of scientific results in a format understandable to the world scientific community).
The sum of the points obtained according to these criteria determined the overall rating of the institution with a maximum score of 30 points. Those institutions that received 15 points or more, and there were 29 of them, were granted access to both databases. 74 universities gained access to one of the two databases.
"We started from the need to reach the largest possible number of scientists - students, post-graduate students, scientific and scientific-pedagogical workers. And in order to expand the audience of users as much as possible, a special additional condition was established. The institution that has received access is obliged to provide it in the computer rooms of its libraries to everyone who wishes - regardless of which institutions and institutions they represent. As a result, we managed to cover almost the entire country: in every regional center, as well as in such cities as Mariupol, Kryvyi Rih, Kremenchuk, Melitopol, there is access to both databases," the head of the department noted.
He added that in addition to providing access, service provider companies Elsevier (Scopus) and Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) agreed to hold seminars and trainings in Kyiv and the regions at the request of the Ministry of Education and Science. They will discuss how to increase publication activity and the quality of scientific articles, find scientific publications for publications, and plan a scientific career. In addition, the named companies will arrange the profiles of Ukrainian universities and scientific institutions in the databases, which will allow to increase their ratings and visibility on the world scientific map to a certain extent.
We would like to remind you that at this year's competition of scientific works of young scientists, 123 projects won, which will be financed at the expense of the state.
