The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of ‘Open Science’ or ‘Open Research’ has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics. Evidencebased rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies. We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of ‘global’ databases. These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

The article is devoted to the prospects of development of the national library activity. The purpose of the article is to determine the ways of library construction. For the first time the original methodology for its development analysis on the basis of supply and demand for library services is proposed. The dynamics of changes in the market of library services in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods is presented. It is shown that the decrease in demand for library services is largely due to the obsolescence of library collections and the inability to meet the information needs of readers. The author comes to the conclusion that the vector of library construction should be set by the state and society. If in the Soviet period the emphasis was placed on the interests of the state to form a new “Soviet” person, today it should shift towards the humanization of social relations and the creation of conditions for the creative development of an individual. It is noted that the unfavorable situation in library construction is created by certain demographic and socioeconomic factors. Their compensation should also form the basis of the state library policy.

The lag of Russia in the development of the fifth technological order has had a dramatic impact on research and technological libraries. Until the early 1990s, they were rightfully considered unique access points to relevant scientific knowledge, and now they are experiencing an acute crisis, looking for their place in the radically changed landscape of scholarly communications

The article identifies the main challenges that led to the crisis. The aim of the study is to find answers to these challenges, namely: new tasks that libraries can take on and that will be in demand by the scientific community. However, their solution is possible only after mastering new competencies and providing necessary resources. To systematize this picture, a matrix of tasks, resources and competencies is constructed.

Aim. The article aims at the analysis of the dynamics and the structure of the Russian markets of scholarly electronic information broken by reference groups of providers and users.

Materials and Methods. Materials comprise results of the data processing of the Russian surveys on acquisition budgets in 2012–2018 and published results of the international surveys. We analyze three main reference groups and four sub-groups of the Russian organizations and three reference groups of providers of the electronic scholarly information. We obtained market shares of different reference groups of Russian subscribers and analyzed temporal dynamics of the market structure in 2012–2018.

We obtained subscription chains and preferences broken by resource providers in Russia and compared our results with the results of the 2018 survey of American academics. We developed Russian rating of information providers and estimated market shares of each reference group.

Results. The market of electronic scholarly information shows continuous concentration towards the group of universities. In 2018, relative share of the university segment of the market of electronic resources made 94%. Since 2015, the share of the reference group of the universities of the 5/100 project increased from 36% to 46%, whereas the share of two national Russian universities shrank from 12% to 9% in 2017–2018. The Russian market of electronic resources is broken in three nearly equal parts related to three groups of resource providers and producers: 35% belong to the group of international publishers, 36% – to the Russian subscription agents and 29% – to the Russian producers and providers of electronic information. Nine of ten organizations responded that they subscribe via Russian information vendors and subscription agents and four of ten – directly via international publishers. This result corresponds to the results of the Academic Library Collection Development Survey 2018.

Conclusions. One can conclude that the Russian market of electronic resources is monopolized as referred to the users/consumers of scholarly electronic information and non-monopolized referring the providers and producers of electronic resources. The market comprises three almost equal segments related to three reference groups of providers and producers of electronic resources. The majority of Russian organizations subscribe to electronic resources via Russian electronic information producers or agents.

Scientific challenge: A study of the current state of library and information sciences via bibliometric analysis of scientific journals and their editorial board members, i. e. geographic distribution and bibliometric analysis of their scholarly output resulting in additional approaches to evaluate serials and scientific area.
Purpose: Bibliometric analyses of journals and scholarly output and geographic distribution of their editorial board members being the most authoritative experts over the last 5 years; detection of large scientific centers of library and information science; detection of a core of academic journals.
Originality: For the first time in Russian literature results of the analysis of editorial boards are described for additional evaluation of library and information science journals and relevant scientific areas in general. Due to a limited number of papers on analysis of editorial boards this paper can be used as methodological one as well.
Findings: Analysis of geographic distribution enabled us to detect a share of foreign members of almost 25 percent. The largest groups of Russian experts are located in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, but also in two regional centers of the European part of Russia – Voronezh and Samara, while only Novosibirsk is the center of the Siberian expert group in library and information science. Experts mainly work at universities, followed by research organizations of The Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Wide range of bibliometric indices of editorial board members correlates with that of relevant journals. Some approaches of editors to enhance journal indices are detected including publication of their own high-level papers in journals which they are working for since these papers are attracting a larger amount of citations as compared with papers of other authors. Another strategy assumes that editorial board members cite their own journal in other serials. Co-citation data of analyzed journals predominantly demonstrate the absence of strong connections between journals.
Conclusions: Editorial boards play a significant role in enhancing bibliometric indices of journals, and stronger integration of Russian library and information science society is necessary which may result in increasing currently low ranks of the studied journals among international serials.

The article discusses the “additional” course of Buddhist education lam-rim, which was taught in the monasteries of Northwest China, Mongolia and Transbaikalia (19th – early 20th centuries). The databases of the Buddhist scholastic collection “Choira” of the Center of Oriental manuscripts and xylographs in the Institute of Mongolian Studies, Buddhology and Tibetology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMSBT SO RAN), as well as traditional bibliographic handbooks – “garchaks”, make it possible to understand that the texts of lam-rims are an integral part of the Buddhist book culture of this region. Our analysis has demonstrated that the study of this scholastic subject in the monasteries of Northwest China, Mongolia and Transbaikalia (19th – beginning 20th centuries) was based on a varied

Tibetan Buddhist literature from fundamental works of Indian classics to popular works of local scholastics. It is also necessary to emphasize that if to compare this section (lam-rim) of Tibetan scholastic literature “Choira” (in IMBT SB RAS) with the other sections (Pramana, Prajna-Paramita, Madhyamika Vinaya, Abhidharma) we find that the largest number of works of local authors are found in lam-rim. An important result of the research is the historical fact that the books of the Buryat monastic printing houses (Aga, Tsugol, Egita, Ana datsans of Trans-Baikal region) make it possible to understand the level of development of lam-rims literature in this region (19th – beginning 20th centuries) in the field of writing and publishing scholastic works in Northwest China, Mongolia and Transbaikalia. The study of authorship of lamrim texts stored in the IMBT SB RAS can confirm that, thanks to the works of representatives of these cross-border regions, a kind of Renaissance of Tibetan scholasticism took place in the Buddhist culture of the entire Inner Asia. A special role in this process was played by the Amdo, Mongolian and Buryat monasteries. It may be assumed that representatives of the historical Amdo region (the territory where Tibetans and Mongols lived together), Mongolia and Transbaikalia in these centuries created a culture of mass writing of Buddhist educational and philosophical literature.

Personal libraries are an important element of national and regional book culture. Their study helps to reveal similarities and peculiarities in spiritual, cultural and socioeconomic development of different regions of a country.

The purpose of the article: to analyze the document flow of the Far Eastern authors, to determine the degree of study of pre-revolutionary personal libraries of the Far Eastern regions in Russia and the problems arising in their study and preservation. As a result, the content analysis revealed 33 publications on the subject for the period 1978-2017, 24 of them were published from 2001 to 2017.

Conclusions: up to now there is no a complete list of owners of private libraries, their descriptions, views on the traditions of book-gathering in the region during the period men. This situation is fraught with the loss of a significant part of this segment of cultural heritage. This process can be stopped by the intensification of the identification, allocation and study of pre-revolutionary personal libraries of the far East in the book collections of institutions in the region, as well as the creation of an electronic resource that would accumulate data on the phenomenon under consideration.

Improving the efficiency of the use of public funds directed at scientific and technological research and development is one of the urgent problems of our time. Among the possible solutions is scientific organizations funding according to their results. With this aim, a number of countries have implemented evaluation of their scientific organizations productivity at the national level. Evaluation of the effectiveness of organizations engaged in scientific and technical R&D, and the distribution of funding according to the results of such evaluation there are in the UK (the first country to introduce such practices), Italy and Russia. Starting from 2020, the Republic of Armenia is also planning to invest a rating model for financing state scientific organizations.

The article presents the model of rating financing of the state scientific organizations in Armenia, developed and proposed by the Committee on science of the Republic of Armenia. The introduction of the model will lead to the formation of additional financial resources and increase the efficiency of budget financing, as it will be done with the account of results of a scientific organization.

The concept of «third place», formulated by R. Oldenburg, can be used as one of the tools for a library transformation. «The third place» is a multifunctional public space, that provides opportunities for intellectual and cultural communication, creativity, self-development and self-expression, a place where one wants to be and wants to return («the first place» according to this concept is home, «the second place» – work or study). The purpose of this article is to consider the concept of «the third place» in the context of its realization in the library and information sphere in Tumen (Russia). Various relevant documents regulating the work of libraries (first of all – public libraries) contain positions confirming the interrelation of library and information activity with the concept of «the third place». Many characteristics of «the third places» («humanitarian», technical and technological, etc.) determine the direction of work of libraries at the modern stage. For the study several similar characteristics were chosen: accessibility, locality; openness to all social categories; the possibility for leisure, entertainment; comfort, ease of interaction. The method of survey with elements of the semantic differential was used. The respondents were the users of the Information and library center for youth (Tyumen, Russia). The research was to identify the degree of severity of these characteristics in library.

The results of survey analysis allow the confirmation that the activity of the Information and library center for youth corresponds to the characteristics of «the third place». Librarians work on their integration and development constantly. Also they preserve the major, document-information, content of activity of libraries.

The concept of «the third place» is not the only option for the development of each library, but it provides the possibility of using a certain set of conceptual characteristics as a working tool for library and information activity.

Book Review:
Kuzoro K. A., Lyapkova A. A., Masyaykina E. A., Degtyareva A. I. Social Work of Rural Libraries in Tomsk Region: Directions, Opportunities, Contribution to Rural Development (2000-2010) / Ed. K.A. Cuzoro. Tomsk: Publishing House Tom. University, 2019.116 p. (In Russ.).