Leading scientific journals from Europe and the United States have started to groundlessly reject papers written by Russian scientists and postgraduates, according to some well-known researchers of the Russian Academy of Sciences and publishers of physics and chemistry magazines.
According to some scientists, many Western journals have started to send back papers written by Russian scientists and graduates without conducting any review in recent months. It has been speculated that this could be related to sanctions imposed against Russia.
Last month scientists from the Russian Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics claimed that the number of 'unjustified' refusals of their papers by international journals had significantly increased since June this year.
According to Sergey Chapyshev, chief researcher at the Institute of Chemical Physics, several papers written by scientists at the institute had been rejected by the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry and other journals. Among the rejected papers were some co-authored with foreign scientists.
While the Editor-in-Chief Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, Professor of Peter Seeberger, said that the journal welcomes and publishes high quality manuscripts from all countries, the claims by scientists were supported by Russian scientific journals.
According to Irina Machova, editor of Mendeleev Communications, many authors had offered papers that were originally written for international journals. In addition to refusals of publication, there have reportedly been increased numbers of refusals of Western grants for Russian scientists.
According to Vadim Tarasov, head of the department of pharmacology at IM Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University – one of Russia's leading universities – some Western grants that should have been provided to scientists at the university had been frozen after the start of the conflict in Ukraine. This had also resulted in partial suspension of cooperation with Western partners in science.
