At the end of the previous year, the Ministry of Science issued two announcements - from the session of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and after the meeting with the Union of Science.
In the announcement from the session of the National Council, the Minister of Science, Jelena Begović, emphasized the importance of introducing a new salary financing model for the scientific community.
"We introduced a new salary funding model after 12 years, where we had a big challenge of long-term categorization of the scientific community that was not changed, because of which a part of scientists was in an unequal position," she said.
Scientific associate and president of the trade union organization of the Institute of Physics, a branch of the Union of Science, Radmila Panajotović claims for "Vreme" that not all interested parties participated in that communication and that the Union of Science was only aware of the content of the finished plan of the Ministry in October, during the presentation at the meeting in the headquarters of the Union of Science.
After the meeting held in mid-October, the Union of Science wrote in its statement that it supports the proposal for a new salary model in science, but that it is necessary to revise the part of the model that refers to "rewarding the best".
Panajotović notes that at that time none of the suggestions of the Trade Union were adopted.
Recent funding of wages
Until recently, salary categories made big differences and did not correspond to the actual contribution of scientists in their work because, says Panajotović, the evaluations on the basis of which those categories were determined were last done more than 10 years ago.
"People reached the highest scientific title, but remained in the lowest salary category because the ministries did not do their job according to the rules, which is to check the scientific contribution of each of us every two years."
Current salary of scientists
"With the Decree, the Ministry made a small positive step by moving people who had salaries in the lowest categories to the level of the standard salary determined for each scientific and research profession," says Panajotović.
According to data available from the Union of Science, the level of standard salary for a scientific advisor, which is the highest title, is around 151.000 dinars. The position below scientific adviser is senior scientific associate with a salary of around 126.000 dinars. The standard salary of a scientific associate is currently around 107.000 dinars.
Researcher - associate and researcher - intern are titles held by candidates with enrolled doctoral studies. The salary of a researcher-associate is about 91.000 dinars, and of a researcher-trainee 85.000 dinars.
Our interlocutor adds that the Ministry justified this by saying that it did not receive enough funds from the Government of the Republic of Serbia, and that it cannot be said that the problem with scientists' salaries has been solved because this move has corrected the earnings of about a third of scientists, mostly in higher scientific positions.
According to the data of eNauka, the number of scientists in scientific and research titles is about 7.400.
"It is completely uncertain when these standard wages will reach the level of the highest," she concludes.
Additional earnings for excellent
On the other hand, he points out that the Ministry allocated money for so-called "excellence" in work and says that this is very questionable both in terms of the criteria and the decision to make it a 30 percent salary supplement.
The criteria for determining excellence in work are found in the regulation, and how scientists are ranked is written in the Guidelines for ranking researchers in scientific titles for determining the corrective coefficient of excellence.
"With the introduction of such an allowance for excellence, even though the salary system is not even close to being regulated, another factor has been introduced that will disrupt salary relationships within professions in the scientific community," says our interlocutor.
Quantity, not quality
The regulation stipulates that publicly available sources of results recorded in the eScience information system are used to determine the excellence of researchers.
Radmila Panajotović points out that a large number of scientists believe that excellence is actually impossible to adequately define due to the specificity of research requirements and unequal working conditions.
One of the obvious examples that the criterion of citations and number of papers is not good is the appearance of hyperproduction in certain areas of research. Panajotović says that there are illogicalities for someone to have 15 to 20 works per year, which would be more than one published work per month.
"Everyone who works in science knows that it takes at least three months to publish one quality paper," she points out and adds that someone who publishes such a large number of papers is either doing routine research or has a large group, so all papers are automatically signed.
The scientific community is now working to remove technical errors and illogicalities, as well as to review the evaluation criteria, Panajotović states, and says that the proposals were that the reward should not be done through salary increases or that the percentage should be lower.
Since Serbia has a very small fund for research, one of the possibilities, according to our interlocutor, is that people who have above-average results are rewarded by research groups receiving additional money for going to international conferences, publishing in journals that are the most cited, and so on. stimulates their scientific work, or rewards in the form of additional funds for research.
