New Nomenclature of Scientific Specialties approved

The Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, by order No. 118 of February 24, 2021, approved a new Nomenclature of scientific specialties, in which academic degrees of candidate and doctor of sciences are awarded.
The previous Nomenclature has been in effect since 2009 and did not take into account structural changes in science and science and technology policy.

The development of a new version of the nomenclature was carried out in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation dated March 28, 2020 No. Pr-589, on the basis of which a working group was created by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, the task of which included a comprehensive analysis of the existing list of scientific specialties, the development of proposals for elimination of unclaimed specialties, consolidation of existing and addition of new specialties. The working group included professor of PetrSU V.A. Gurtov, since the Center for Budget Monitoring of PetrSU prepared information and reference materials for its work.

The composition of the new Nomenclature was replenished with four new groups of specialties: computer science and informatics, biotechnology, subsoil use and mining sciences, cognitive sciences, including 21 new specialties. Comparative analysis of the list of scientific specialties of the 2021 Nomenclature with scientific specialties of the current Nomenclature shows the presence of four groups of scientific specialties:

group 1 – specialties that have not changed their name in the 2021 Nomenclature – 215 scientific specialties;
group 2 – specialties whose names in the 2021 Nomenclature have undergone editorial changes – 58 scientific specialties;
group 3 – specialties whose names have undergone significant changes or were excluded from the 2021 Nomenclature – 157 scientific specialties;
group 4 – scientific specialties that were not in the current Nomenclature – 21 scientific specialties.
These innovations in the dissertation councils of PetrSU only touched the specialty “05.21.01 Technology and machines for logging and forestry”, which was included in group 3, for which it is possible to function for another 18 months in the same status, and then re-registration of the composition of the dissertation council will be necessary. For other specialties, PetrSU dissertation councils can work as usual.