The reason why papers written by Russian researchers are often rejected by international academic journals is that their authors are mostly unaware of today’s methods of global academic communication, commonly taught in courses of academic writing. As academic writing is not taught systematically in Russia, the easiest way to overcome the problem seems to introduce the best international teaching models directly into the Russian educational system. However, such an approach may not be efficacious. The author believes that academic writing can only be successfully embedded into the Russian academic and cultural context provided it is taught explicitly in the native tongue at all levels of education as part of a more complex system of academic literacy development. This will gradually improve the quality of national publications and thus contribute to their acceptance by the international academic community.

This article reflects on the evolution of the English language as a common global communications medium for science and for academic writing. The shared use of a common language in academic publishing speeds up the exchange of ideas and more rapidly brings new work and insights to a global professional audience. In turn, this advances the reputation of researchers, authors, universities and national institutions. All languages and writing systems (scripts or alphabets) evolve over time. English is a European language which has evolved in the Roman alphabet over 1500 years into its recognisable modern form. For reasons which seem to be founded primarily in its relatively simple grammatical structure, alphabet and fault tolerance, English has evolved into the language of choice for international communication, between peoples with a wide variety of mother tongues and writing scripts. Its utility has advanced rapidly with digital technology and the Internet. Russian researchers, authors, institutions and publishers who wish to secure international recognition for their work should consider co-publication in English, as it is then more likely to be read, quoted, cited and re-broadcast to a global audience. Greater transparency of academic output across the major international citation systems in this common language may in turn be a major stimulus to raising global academic standards, and to greater international academic cooperation.

The paper proposes a review of websites’ evaluation and comparison in the historical aspect. Data on webometric research in Russia and abroad, with a focus on the international ranking Webometrics are given.

In 2016, a new project aimed at identification of irresponsible publishing practices in Russian scientific journals was launched in Russia. Research papers published in Russian journals included in the list of the Higher Attestation Commission were checked in a semi- automated format using a software program developed specifically for the Russian project Dissernet. The 4-year realization of the Dissernet project allowed 6,000 false dissertations, which contained multi-page incorrect borrowings from other research works (plagiarism cases), to be identified. Thus far, over 50,000 research papers published in the Russian language have been checked. It has been found that in more than 2,000 cases the authors violated the basic principles of publication ethics. The statistics obtained has allowed three categories of ‘problem’ journals to be distinguished. The first category includes predatory journals that are characterized by a suspiciously large number of publications covering a wide range of topics; a rapid growth in the number of publications with time; the absence or fictional participation of esteemed scientists in the editorial board work; as well as the factual absence of the peer-review procedure. The second category includes well-estab-lished scientific journals with ‘a low immunity level’ that practice the peer-review procedure only formally, thus permitting the principles of scientific ethics to be violated. The third category includes journals whose editorial boards collaborate with those dissertation councils that ‘produce’ false dissertations on ‘an industrial scale’. The statistics of the retraction rate of research papers in Russia and worldwide is presented. A conclusion is drawn that the appalling state of scientific publishing in Russia is the result, on the one hand, of the seriously impaired system of scientific expertise in the society, and, on the other, of unreasonably high requirements that the Ministry of Education and Sciences in Russia apply to access the publication activity of Russian scientists and university lecturers.

The essay considers historical development and current state of academic ethics. It is focused on the problems of Russian science. The authors treated ethics in its interrelation with the quality issues and scientometrics indicators. The authors also discussed the problems connected with the wide expansion of the Open Access movement. The ethical dilemma is treated as a contraposition of the categories «science» and «anti-science». This paper is initially meant to be an essay, the authors plan a profound scientific research on this subject further.