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About theses - in all details

In 2019, JINR started to realize the right of independent awarding of scientific degrees. After deducting the Covid period, this is five years of work on the organization of thesis defenses - time when one can refer to the history of the issue, analyze and share experience. Scientific Secretary of the JINR Qualification Committee Oleg BELOV highlights all aspects of this activity that is in many respects new for the Institute.

Oleg Valerievich, let us be reminded of what necessitated changes in the approaches to the work of dissertation councils. What preceded it?

- It was preceded by the launch of a pilot project in 2016 to grant the right to independently award degrees to two leading Russian universities - Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University. At the same time, it was almost immediately announced that an expanded list of universities and research institutes would be developed that would also have this opportunity, in order to test the new system nationwide.

The launched pilot project gave very broad powers to the organizations included in it. Thus, the participants of the project received the right to independently organize and change the membership of their dissertation councils, to choose the scientific specialties for which these councils are granted the right to accept theses for defense. Their competence included determining the procedure for awarding academic degrees and the criteria that theses should meet. The right to independently organize the procedure for deprivation, restoration of academic degrees and consideration of appeals was given. The possibility to have their own forms of diplomas on academic degrees, to regulate the procedure for their registration and issuance was given.

In the world, the practice of awarding degrees by individual institutions, mainly, universities, is widespread. Where there is no system of state attestation, universities have quite wide opportunities in determining approaches to the organization of the process of awarding degrees.

Exchange of viewpoints after the awarding of diplomas on 19 December, 2024

We had to find out how such a system would function on the basis of Russian legislation. Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University that were the first to realize the right to independently award academic degrees, adopted two different approaches to the organization of dissertation councils. While Moscow State University retained the traditional format of large dissertation councils that work permanently, St. Petersburg State University went the other way and introduced the practice of one-time councils developed for the defense of each thesis. One-time councils consist of 5-7 highly qualified scientists on the topic of the thesis under consideration that make the decision to award the degree.

The pilot project in the format of two universities with autonomy in terms of awarding academic degrees lasted a little over a year. In August 2017, the Russian Government issued a decree approving an expanded list of scientific and educational organizations that are granted similar rights. There are now 14 such organizations. The new list, in addition to universities, included well-known research organizations. JINR was also included in this second wave. And if we turn to the present day, there are already 27 such organizations in the country. During this time, the list has been supplemented several times.

And how was the transition to the new system? What was done at the Institute for this purpose?

- Our path to organize a new mechanism started around the middle of 2018, when JINR joined this list. We needed not just to reform the current dissertation councils but to create our own administrative system responsible for the entire process of awarding scientific degrees, starting from determining the requirements for dissertations and members of dissertation councils to the diploma form. In other words, the functions that were previously implemented by the Higher Attestation Commission, namely, coordinating the work of dissertation councils, organizing the selection of members and the organization of councils, their activities, organizing defenses and supervision (what we today call self-control of the work of dissertation councils) - all of these functions have now fallen on the shoulders of the Joint Institute.

We communicated a lot with representatives of the Ministry, when we were preparing our documents and regulations and tried to some extent to be guided by the expectations of the Ministry of Education and Science from the introduction of the new system of awarding scientific degrees. It became clear that it is necessary not only to preserve but also to substantially increase the level of organization of defenses at JINR. What does it mean? It means that the regulations under which the Institute functions should be highly verified. It means that the Institute should strictly observe the developed and adopted regulations and monitor the level of dissertations defended at JINR.

It should be highlighted that one of the main conditions for organizations to be included in the list was that the requirements for theses and dissertation council members were not lower but as a rule, even higher compared to those of VAK system. That is, all 27 organizations that currently have the right to independently confer academic degrees, either by the number of publications or by the requirements for members of the dissertation council have declared competencies higher than those of organizations working in the VAK system.

Based on these considerations, from the beginning of 2018 to the middle of 2019, we developed our own regulations on the awarding of scientific degrees at JINR. It is this regulatory framework that we are now guided by. This is the key difference from the previous order of the organization of defenses.

And what are our requirements for defense higher than in VAK?

- We have higher requirements for the number of publications for PhD theses and higher requirements for members of dissertation councils in terms of publications in peer-reviewed journals. These are important criteria that testify to the quality of theses defended here and the qualifications of dissertation councils.

What are the advantages of our system in general?

- The system of awarding academic degrees at our institution gives the opportunity to prepare and to defend theses in one of two languages - Russian or English - at the choice of the candidate. Another innovation in the work of our dissertation councils was the introduction of electronic submission of documents for defense. It turned out to be a very convenient option for applicants from afar. That is, a candidate can submit the initial set of documents through our Information System for Scientific Certification, abbreviated as ISSC, where the candidate can register, see all the regulations, rules, submit documents and the thesis for consideration. The availability of this system has significantly expanded the geography of applicants and simplified the submission of documents by applicants from other countries. ISSC was developed by the Laboratory of Information Technologies in collaboration with the JINR Qualification Committee. At present, the Laboratory supports the system and the entire portal of the JINR Dissertation Councils.

Was it difficult to get started? People tend to distrust novelty...

- The new dissertation councils started on 1 September, 2019. We had only two defenses that year. The first defenders were two young scientists from Mongolia. And later, gradually, the system started to gain momentum, the number of applicants began to increase. Of course, there was a psychological factor - we had to wait and see how the new councils would work. We had the peak of defenses before the transition to the new system - in 2018. With the introduction of the new system, as we expected, there was a decline that was eventually overcome.

A difficult period in terms of organizing defenses was the Covid period, when all dissertation councils in the country had to temporarily suspend their work, since defenses were carried out exclusively in-person format. When it became clear that the restrictions would last for more than one month, we began to work out the organization of defenses in a remote format. The difficulty here was precisely in ensuring legal aspects, since the participation of members of the dissertation council, the opponents and the supervisor in the videoconference mode gave rise to a lot of unregulated in the pre-Covid legislation moments that could have a negative impact on the candidate even after a successful defense. All these subtleties had to be verified and correctly spelled out in our provisions.

At first, temporary normative documents were adopted that allowed, before the expiration of restrictive measures, resuming the defense with a limited number of members of the dissertation council present in person. The mandatory personal presence of the candidate at the defense was retained. During the pandemic, the first defenses were held in the format of "the applicant, the chair of the dissertation council or his/her deputy and the scientific secretary", while the others were connected via videoconference. Subsequently, we retained aspects of the distance mode in our system, as did many other organizations.

You spoke about the different formats of MSU and SPbU. What format was chosen for JINR?

- When we discussed what format of the dissertation councils to choose, opinions were divided: there were supporters of permanently functioning large councils and there were those that suggested the format of one-time councils. As a result, a compromise path was chosen and it was decided to unite both approaches, giving the laboratories the right to decide for themselves which option is more acceptable to them. Thus, the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics chose the format of one-time compact councils that are collected under a certain defense, in the other laboratories, the more traditional approach was preferred based on permanent councils.

And which system do candidates prefer?

- I must say that both of these systems have their advantages. For example, if we analyze the dynamics of defenses, we have the largest number of defenses in one-time councils, even though these councils meet only in two specialties - "Theoretical Physics" and "Physics of Atomic Nuclei and Elementary Particles, High Energy Physics". Of course, there are also defenses in large councils, for example, the DLNP Council can be confidently put on the second place by the number of defenses after BLTP. In other laboratories, the distribution is more or less the same. In general, annually, we have a little less than 30 defenses at the Institute. This trend has been maintained for the last three years.

How do you evaluate these statistics?

- Of course, we cannot compare our Institute with large universities such as Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University. Hundreds of defenses are held there every year. But for organizations similar in size to JINR, this is a normal figure. Most of our staff members currently defend themselves in JINR councils, except for cases when there is no dissertation council in the Institute for the specialty being defended. Obviously, the number of defenses is largely a matter of personal motivation of an employee to obtain an academic degree.

Let's return to the new system. What are its peculiarities for those that organize defenses?

- One of the most active organizers of the process of independent awarding of academic degrees became scientific secretaries of dissertation councils that took on much more functions than before. First of all, to monitor the quality of theses submitted by applicants and the observance of the rules of defense. Whereas, previously, the controlling functions were entirely entrusted to the Higher Attestation Commission that if necessary, issued prescriptions for a particular defense, today, we can obtain such prescriptions only after the passage of time, when the results of monitoring the work of our system are gained. That is, of course, we will see that we did something wrong a year ago but we will not be able to change anything. It imposes a serious responsibility on the organization of the entire system since in this case, it is primarily about the fate of the applicant that is awarded our diploma.

When we talked to the Chairman of the VAK and the representatives of the Ministry, it was always emphasized that the work of dissertation councils will be largely based on the reputation component of the organization. That is, the prestige of our dissertation councils among applicants will be determined, among other things, by the quality of organizational work around this entire process. Another important principle that was laid down in the work of the new system, was the principle of openness. Everything related to the content of the dissertation, the defense procedure and decision-making is done publicly, with the exception of the secret ballot procedure. Any dissertation can be viewed on the website in open access. Feedback from the supervisor, advisor and official opponents is also available for review. Anyone can attend the defense by submitting an application to the dissertation council in accordance with the established procedure. At the same time, all those present at the defense have the opportunity to ask questions to the candidate.

How often did you have to make changes to your documents? And what for?

- By and large, over the past time, we have made two adjustments to our provisions. They were conditioned not so much by the practice of application, as by changes in the legislation of the Russian Federation and the peculiarities of the work of the system of awarding scientific degrees in the Covid and post-Covid period. It should be highlighted that the supervisory functions of the Ministry of Education and Science with regard to organizations that have the right to independently award scientific degrees are very broad. A mechanism for controlling the work of dissertation councils in such organizations has been developed. In particular, there is the Federal Information System for State Scientific Certification (FIS SSC) where we first, four times and at present, twice a year, submit reports on the work of our councils. Periodically, we receive feedback and suggestions from the Ministry of Education and Science on how to improve the work of our system. Over the past few years, the recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science have mostly been to synchronize our regulations with changing legislation. I think this is a pretty good result, considering that by developing our own system of awarding academic degrees we were meeting a completely new task for us that made us to dive deeply into the legislative aspects of this process.

Did the status of JINR as an international organization have an impact on this?

- In fact, JINR is a very non-trivial case from the legal point of view of realization of the right of independent awarding of scientific degrees. After all, the independent awarding of scientific degrees is implemented within the framework of the State System for Scientific Certification of the Russian Federation. That is, in our case, the right to award scientific degrees was given to us by one of the JINR Member States. Formally, the diploma issued by JINR is absolutely equivalent in its legal status to the diplomas of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. On the one hand, it is good, since it guarantees to applicants an absolutely equivalent status of the diploma issued by JINR. On the other hand, the current legal status does not give wide opportunities for recognizing the equivalence of our diploma with the diplomas of some Member States without a certain agreement with the Russian Federation at the governmental level. In addition, for a number of States, establishing equivalence may not be achievable in principle, as the first and foremost comparison is between the two countries' postgraduate and PhD programmes and examinations. If these programmes differ significantly, it may be impossible to establish equivalence of diplomas. Nor is it possible to establish equivalence unilaterally. In this sense, the situation could to some extent be alleviated by the postgraduate school at JINR that allows JINR to automatically enter, for example, the list of organizations of the international network ENIC-NARIC that unites the efforts of national information centres for the academic recognition of qualifications. At present, this network includes a total of 56 countries that function in accordance with the principles of the Lisbon Recognition Convention of 1997. The ENIC-NARIC list is emphasized by many applicants from Member States where it is sometimes sufficient for the issuing organization to be on the list in order to recognize the high status of a diploma. However, since inclusion in this list is tied to the mechanisms of state accreditation, only universities and scientific institutes that have a license for postgraduate studies are on the list according to Russian legislation.

What does our new system give the applicant?

- First of all, simplification of procedural moments. We have tried to save the applicant as much as possible from the formalities required during the preparation and defense of the thesis. First, we have removed the leading organization and reduced the number of documents to be submitted. The applicant does not need to come here to submit documents, we have an electronic system. In this sense, defense has become easier for the applicant. What has made it more difficult is that the requirements for the quality of the thesis and the number of publications have increased. And of course, compared to the previous system, the new mechanisms have allowed better adapting the process of awarding degrees for representatives of other countries. Due to the fact that our theses are publicly available and many of them are prepared in English, the awareness of the general scientific community about the papers prepared at JINR increases.

What advice would you give to future applicants?

- Last year, we held the Rosatom Scientific School that included a roundtable discussion with young employees on awarding academic degrees. The main recommendation that we all agreed on was to prepare high-quality theses, to be published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals as much as possible and not be afraid to go back to improve the thesis at the stage of its preparation.

How will publications in the new JINR scientific journal Natural Science Review be considered during the thesis defense?

- Currently, after two years, we prepare the next changes in our regulations. And we will have an innovation concerning this journal. It has been decided that a scientific article in Natural Science Review can be one of the mandatory publications required for the defense of a PhD thesis. The journal has not yet been included in the VAK list and does not have an impact factor but since the requirements for the number of publications are higher than those set by the VAK, it will not result in a violation of the mandatory condition about the criteria increased in comparison with the dissertation councils of the Ministry of Education and Science. And those that prepare theses should consider the possibility of taking into account the publication in this journal already now.

Do foreign employees have no problems with the recognition of JINR diplomas in their home countries?

- The concepts of recognizing the legal status of a diploma and establishing equivalence to diplomas issued outside the Russian Federation should be distinguished. The lack of equivalence of a diploma to a document issued by the national certification system of another state, as a rule, does not prevent a person from being employed in a scientific profession and does not indicate non-recognition of the legal status of a diploma obtained in another country. The exception is when a diploma issued by the national certification system of this state or recognized as equivalent in the established order is required for obtaining the position of professor or the degree of habilitated doctor. Here, the solution can only be to undergo the procedure of diploma nostrification, again provided that the training programmes of the two countries are equivalent. Therefore, in practice, the need to establish the equivalence of diplomas between different states is rather an exceptional case, when the applicant for some reason failed to correctly correlate the place of his defense and further plans to work in organizations that have requirements for the availability of a national diploma.

Every time, the ceremony of awarding diplomas at JINR ends with communication with the applicants. Is this a kind of exchange of opinions?

- Diplomas on the awarding of academic degrees are awarded in a solemn atmosphere; at one time, we fixed it in our regulations. Besides the applicants and representatives of the Qualification Committee, the awarding ceremony is traditionally attended by guests: relatives and friends of the diploma recipients. The official part is usually followed by an informal conversation that is useful for everyone. It was especially true in the early years of the new Councils, when feedback from applicants and scientific secretaries was very important for improving the work of the entire system.

Did you have to make the diploma specially?

- Yes, it is the JINR diploma that we award. It is bilingual. For this purpose, an individual layout was developed, different from the VAK sample but with all the required components of protection.

Often, when a new case is implemented in an organization, there are additional benefits in passing. Is there such a moment in your case?

- The main advantage of the new system is, in my opinion, the increased attractiveness of thesis preparation and defense in JINR. In addition, JINR has acquired new competences to independently organize and regulate a very responsible process. When developing our regulations on the awarding of scientific degrees, we closely cooperated with the lawyers of the Ministry of Education and Science. It was important when working out the subtle legal points when on the one hand, we are free to determine the mechanisms for reviewing and defending a dissertation but on the other hand, there is a high probability of doing something wrong and this error may not manifest itself immediately but under certain legal circumstances. Since in this case, we are talking about the fate of applicants, including those that have come to us from other organizations, we had to get involved in the organization of, I would say, a new culture of attitude to the awarding of academic degrees. And the precedents that have taken place in the practice of the new councils have shown the stability and consistency of our provisions in resolving a number of complex issues.

What news are expected in this area?

- As I have already said, a scheduled update of the regulations on the awarding of academic degrees is currently prepared. However, no fundamental changes are expected. There are plans to improve some aspects of the ISSC electronic system, primarily, accumulation of statistics on various aspects of the work of our councils. These technical issues will not affect the work of applicants in this system.

Oleg Valerievich, to conclude our conversation, please, present the figures on the number of defenses to date.

- Since September 2019, a total of 124 theses have been defended in JINR dissertation councils, including 28 doctoral theses and 96 candidate theses. In December last year, we issued a diploma to the hundredth applicant defended in the new JINR Dissertation Councils. He was Evgeny Kryshen, a senior researcher at the St. Petersburg Konstantinov Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Kurchatov Institute.

Galina MYALKOVSKAYA,
photo by Igor LAPENKO