"Recently, biological sovereignty has been widely discussed as another feature of the country’s real sovereignty. In particular, the parliamentary commission of the Federation Council, after investigating the activities of American biological laboratories in Ukraine, stated that this country has lost its "biological sovereignty."
This is another piece of Russian propaganda. It is a typical piece, and we quote it just to show its total absurdity. However, it is important from the other point of view. This quote is from S. Rudnytsky’s article in the scientific journal "Scientific Notes of V. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. Juridical Science" published in 2023.
The university in Ukrainian Simferopol became "Crimean Federal" after the annexation of the peninsula. Its real name is V. Vernadsky Taurida National University. In 2015, it was relocated to Kyiv. The journal "Scientific Notes. Juridical Science" began to be published at the university in 2009. After the annexation, the collaborators continued publishing the journal, changing its name in accordance with the changed name of the university. In 2015, the journal received a certificate of the mass media registration in the Russian Federation.
According to the website of the appropriated journal, at the same time it received an ISSN — International Standard Serial Number. It is assigned to periodicals so that they can be more easily identified, especially in libraries, databases, or when citing in scholarly works.
Despite the fact that the journal "Scientific Notes of V. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. Juridical Science" has a Russian certification, and actually stole the archive and name of the Ukrainian scientific journal and promotes anti-Ukrainian narratives, until August 2024 it used the Ukrainian ISSN.
It means that it was identified as a Ukrainian scientific journal.
Moreover, as it turned out, there are dozens of such scientific journals in the occupied territories: using Ukrainian identification and promoting Russian propaganda, they get into the international libraries and the works of scientists from other countries.
The Suspilne investigative editorial office decided to find out why this problem has not yet been solved despite ten years of war and the occupation of a part of the Ukrainian territory.
Only in occupied Crimea, there are more than 30 such journals
Oleksii Plastun, Doctor in Economics and Professor at Sumy State University, when asked what he does in science, answers: together with a colleague, he attacks the aggressor country.
It was Oleksii who addressed Suspilne and told about scientific journals that use the Ukrainian ISSN in the occupied territories. He took screenshots of more than three dozen Crimean journals that have the Russian registration, but are identified as Ukrainian on the website of the International ISSN Centre.
— An ISSN is a number assigned to each periodical published in a country. Journals need this number to enter libraries all over the world. There are many Donetsk periodicals that do not have an ISSN, because Donetsk newspapers are not interesting even to Donetsk residents. However, if the journal is ambitious, for example, it wants to enter the libraries of at least BRICS countries, it needs an ISSN, because it is part of the international space, explains Oleksii Plastun.
— For example, Vernadsky Federal University publishes 25 journals, the professor continues. — It is just one university, and there are two dozens of them in Crimea. They mostly publish the articles of pseudo-scientists, because normal scientists will not apply to such a garbage dump. These are no-name journals; they do not have access to any scholarly database, not even to Google Scholar or Index Copernicus. However, they are present in the Russian scientific citation index. In essence, this is a cargo cult. Why publish an article in a journal? To prove the scientific competence and for the approbation: the reviewers read the article, issue recommendations. If a normal journal publishes an article, then it is normal material. This is how it works in the normal world. However, in the world of the Russian science, it works like this: to defend a thesis, five articles in journals approved by the Russian Higher Attestation Commission are needed. Any garbage dump will do: just pay 2,000 rubles, publish any set of letters, and you have a published article. It is a cargo cult: we reproduce what others do without understanding what it is for us. However, it is business. The journal receives an ISSN and can fully operate and receive money. 20 articles per issue and 2 to 3 thousand rubles per article make a significant sum.
Oleksii Plastun says that the journals he checked had a Ukrainian ISSN as of February 2024. He wrote a letter to the ISSN National Centre in Ukraine, which operates at the state institution "Book Chamber of Ukraine named after Ivan Fedorov".
— In three or four weeks, they responded that they would deal with the situation, Plastun says.
They were registered by the International Centre
According to the website of the Book Chamber of Ukraine, in order to obtain an ISSN, the publication must submit copies of the certificate of entry of the subject of publishing business into the state register of publishers of Ukraine and the certificate of state registration of print media, an extract from the register of subjects in the field of media, photocopies of the statute, VAT registration certificate, and application letter.
The ISSN National Centre in Ukraine started its work only in March 2021. According to the head of the Centre, Iryna Pohorelovska, since then the ISSN has been assigned to about seven hundred Ukrainian periodicals.
Iryna Pohorelovska assures that the periodicals in the temporarily occupied territories received the ISSN not from the Ukrainian Centre, but from the International Centre, which has been operating in Paris since 1976.
— In 2014, the ISSN International Centre accepted the position of Ukraine that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the territory of Ukraine, just like Donbas, Pohorelovska says. — When the International Centre assigned an ISSN to a periodical published, for example, in the territory of the Republic of Crimea in 2014, it applied the same procedure as to other periodicals published in the world and participating in the ISSN system. There is international standard 3166, which defines the codes of the countries and territories. It is valid and no changes have been made to it regarding the territory of Ukraine, everything corresponds to the Constitution of Ukraine: 24 regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. That is why the ISSN International Centre put "Ukraine" in the "country" field. The Russians would prefer that publications in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine had "Russian Federation" in the "country" field, but the International Centre believes that this is the territory of Ukraine.
However, Iryna Pohorelovska says she does not know based on which documents the International Centre issued ISSNs to publications in the temporarily occupied territories. She adds that there is no procedure for cancelling the number.
— The assignment of an ISSN does not imply that the ISSN network endorses the content of this publication. ISSN is not a mark of quality; it is simply an identification of a publication, resource or media. The task of the International Centre is to identify all periodicals or resources in the territory of each country, says Pohorelovska.
However, according to her, the Book Chamber together with the International Centre are trying to find a way to solve the problem and have already developed one of the algorithms. In the field "country" for periodicals published in the temporarily occupied territories, they began to put "International". This way, for example, since August, the "Scientific Notes", mentioned at the beginning of this article, has been identified.
— A number of publications of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which the Russians appropriated and re-registered, now have the mark "International" and they are very dissatisfied, because they would like "Russia" to be there. If it is "International", then there are many questions regarding the publication, it is considered unscrupulous. We are gradually transferring periodicals published in the temporarily occupied territories to the "International" mark. Universities or scientific institutions that had publications now appropriated by the Russian Federation can contact us with a request to change the ISSN. For example, the Academy of Sciences addressed us to cancel the certificates of periodicals published in the occupied territories, says Pohorelovska.
— In addition, we are planning together with the ISSN International Centre to include in the instructions used by the Centre, a paragraph related to armed conflicts, wars or when one country attacks another, as in our case, continues Pohorelovska. — We want to define how to manage the international ISSN system in the occupied territories, how to assign numbers, what to indicate in records. I have a meeting scheduled at the ISSN International Centre in Paris, where we will work through all these points so that this item appears in the instruction at the end of October.
According to Pohorelovska, in March 2022, the Book Chamber asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to send a letter to the ISSN International Centre with a request to exclude Russia from the international ISSN system.
Deputy Minister of Education: "International" is an intensification of the problem
This year, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine also paid attention to the problem with the Ukrainian ISSN for publications in the temporarily occupied territories. In July, the Book Chamber received a letter signed by Deputy Minister Denys Kurbatov with a request to explain on what basis the ISSN was assigned to publications stolen by the Russians from Ukrainian scientists.
— The Book Chamber replied that they understand this problem and that they will change the codification of these publications from Ukrainian to international, says Kurbatov. — In our opinion, this does not solve the problem. I believe that it intensifies it. With the "INT" prefix offered by the Book Chamber, the temporarily occupied territories will not be marked as Ukrainian at all. It is possible to contact the International Centre to deprive these journals of international numbers. This will be the main result of the activities of both Ukraine and the Book Chamber as the body responsible for this. In fact, we are talking about stolen from Ukraine publications, which were previously published by Ukrainian universities. Instead of NAS (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. — ed.), they put RAS (Russian Academy of Sciences — ed.) and publish under their own brand. The fact that they have an ISSN carries the threat of strengthening Russian propaganda, Russian narratives and generally of recognizing these territories as under the control of the aggressor, the Russian Federation. If scientists from other countries read certain publications and articles and see that, for example, Sevastopol or Melitopol are marked as Russia, they get the impression that it is really so. This should be fought as much as possible.
According to Denys Kurbatov, the problem with scientific publications in the temporarily occupied territories arose at the beginning of the war in 2014. However, more active steps to solve this problem began to be taken relatively recently.
— The problem is not with the ISSN only, adds the deputy minister. — Russian publications are registered in various international databases, including open science. We are trying to deal with it systematically. For example, there is DOAJ database. We had a long correspondence and online meetings with them, so that they would exclude certain publications in Crimea from registration. This summer there was a positive decision. In addition, we managed to agree with them that they would exclude Russians from the management team. However, in fact, this is only one of the first steps. A council to counter Russian propaganda and Russian narratives in scientific publications will be organized at the ministry.
If to consider publications, there are dozens of them in the temporarily occupied territories. If we talk about publications that come out with the mark that Melitopol, Sevastopol, Berdyansk or Mariupol are Russia, these are thousands of publications that are accepted by international publishing houses and are published. In this way, the narrative that the occupied territories of Ukraine are part of the aggressor country is fixed. It is much more difficult to fight with this because these international publications and databases, as a rule, are not state-owned; they are commercial companies. However, we raise this topic and already see changes. We hear more and more what they are thinking about it: how to make some general recommendation for indexing such publications and articles.
This article was funded by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
