The Draft Law on Science: Some Aspects of Regulation of Research and Innovation Infrastructure

The article analyzes the basic provisions of the draft federal law "On science, technology and innovation activities in the Russian Federation" related to research and innovation infrastructure. The author presents a comparative analysis of the draft law and the norms of the current federal legislation and other normative acts regulating research and innovation infrastructure. The main methods of the research are comparative, technical, analytical and descriptive. In comparison with the current laws, the draft law gives a fuller description of the research infrastructure, in particular, the definitions of its main objects and components (research equipment, scientific collection, unique scientific installation, core facility, megascience installation, fund to support science, etc.). However, there is still no systematic approach to the issue: the draft law doesn't contain neither the definitions of the research infrastructure and its structural features, nor the precise formulation of the relationship between research and innovation infrastructure. All these gaps don't allow obtaining a single interpretation of the research infrastructure, and is a significant disadvantage of the bill. In its further development, the author also recommends taking into account the foreign experience, especially in regulating scientific collections. For example, it is necessary to consider enshrining scientific collections as bioresource centers to provide an opportunity for their subsequent integration with international databases. The article considers the novel about the core facility as an independent legal entity. In addition, the need for creation of the Registry of core shared research facilities, which is stated in the bill, is questionable, given that the web-portal “Research infrastructure of the Russian Federation” (http://ckp-rf.ru) has been successfully operating since 2011. The latest contains information not only about the core facilities, but also unique scientific installations, as well as the results of their annual monitoring. To sum up, the bill contains significant positive changes of the current laws, however it requires some improvement.