Vladimir Fortov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said on Saturday that Russia “clearly isn’t managing” to stay ahead of the explosive growth in science around the world. Measured purely by the number of scientific articles published, Iran has nearly overtaken Russia. Fortov called the situation “disgraceful.” In the past 15 years, the number of articles published by scientists in Russia has increased just 12%. In India, meanwhile, the number of scientific publications is three times higher. In China, there are now 10 times more scientific articles. “In the number of articles, China overtook us in 1997, India in 2005, and Brazil in 2007. [Now] Iran is hard on our heels,” Fortov said, Russian news agency ‘Meduza’ reported.
