Ukraine’s call [Національної академії наук України]

A call for solidarity from the President of the National Academy of Sciences (HAH) of Ukraine as a letter in Nature. To help Ukraine scientists to relocate in European countries, if temporarily, #scienceforukraine is posting available positions. Worldwide. In a tribune, Nature has also opened a debate on whether or not “a comprehensive and worldwide boycott of all Russian research [should be enforced], and scientific journals [should] refuse to consider papers by researchers from Russia”. Reflecting on an earlier call from Ukraine’s scientific community to a similar effect, albeit limited to Russian Federation citizens getting access to EU grants [this is already in effect], academic mobility programs [as well], and to journal editorships. And to run international scientific events [like the ICM and EMS 2022 meetings]. While a complete boycott would add to the other sanctions adopted by some countries towards stopping the war, sanctions that impact the ordinary citizen more than the ruling nomenklatura, I doubt it would have any [short-term] significant effect: The Russian Science Foundation has already dropped its requirement to publish in indexed journals outside Russia. It would also most difficult to implement in practice (although I seem to remember SIAM journals rejecting papers co-signed by Iranian authors at some point…)

Marie Curie Career Integration Grants

Another email I received yesterday is about the closing date (March 8) for the Marie Curie Career Integration Grants. Those grants are “intended to improve considerably the prospects for the permanent integration of researchers who are offered a stable research post in Europe after a mobility period in a country for at least 3 years –  a country that is neither an EU Member State nor an Associated Country… The duration of these grants is between 2 and 4 years” and the amount of each grant is 100,000 euros. Those grants seem to be aiming at recruiting new researchers outside the EU and/or bringing back EU researchers currently abroad.