What you sow...
Russian scientist and science-popularizer Artem Oganov
recently described how Western sanctions against Russian academia - imposed by the bibliometric monopoly Web of
Science (WoS) - have ricocheted straight back into the system
that created them.
WoS banned the indexing of new Russian scientific journals.
In practice, that meant only one thing: creating a new journal became pointless
- it would simply be erased from the “global”
scientific map.
Three years passed.
The monopoly cracked. Alternatives appeared - the
Russian platform Inventorus, Chinese ecosystems, even Western substitutes. And
then came the punch line: the French National Center for Scientific Research
(CNRS) - one of the largest research institutions in
the world - withdrew from Web of Science entirely. They
stopped paying €1.4 million per year. Their reasoning was disarmingly simple:
the database is unrepresentative, structurally biased toward English-language
journals, and distorts the scientific picture.
The parable writes itself. Principles built success. Success
bred arrogance. Arrogance replaced principles with ideology. Ideology produced
failure.
WoS did not punish misconduct. It punished citizenship.
Russian scholars were declared “unfit for cooperation” not because of their
work - but because of their passports. This was
presented as moral virtue. In reality, it was the same old political theater - virtue signaling dressed up as ethics, cancel
culture elevated to institutional dogma.
The problem is that Western scientific success was built on
the opposite philosophy.
During the Cold War, Western academic openness - curiosity, competition, collaboration - functioned as a form of soft power. Western
scientists did not shun Soviet colleagues. They invited them, listened to them,
debated them. Knowledge was seen as a universal enterprise - a
shared pursuit within what Isaac Asimov once called the “Empire of the
Intellect.” Even when governments clashed, scientists still recognized one
another as peers.
That openness paid dividends.
And openness, like free markets, punishes arrogance. In the
nineteenth-century United States, some businesses hung signs reading “No Irish
Allowed.” Others posted: “All Nations Welcome.” Over time the second group won - not
because they were kinder, but because they were smarter. Markets reward
inclusion. Exclusion is self-sabotage.
Web of Science chose exclusion - and
assumed its monopoly made it immune to consequences.
It was a strategic miscalculation. Western platforms - from
banks to academic databases - were successful precisely because the world
trusted them to be neutral public utilities. If a system does not care about
your passport, language, or politics, you use it. If it suddenly starts acting
as a political instrument - you leave.
And so people left.
Russian scientists found alternatives. Others quietly took
note. Today nobody knows who will be “cancelled” next - Israelis? Chinese? Indians? The rational
response is the same: do not invest your work, money, or intellectual capital
in a structure that might erase you tomorrow.
Thus, a lesson as old as commerce: monopolies die not from
external attack, but from internal conceit. Friendship and openness built the
West’s intellectual leadership. Moral grandstanding and bureaucratic zeal are
now dismantling it.
Perhaps WoS will learn from this. One hopes the broader West
will too - while there is still time.