Scientific Knowledge as Fictitious Commodity: Models of Research Activity in Russian Universities

Currently modern society undergoes a number of crucial transformations, which are connected with the development of knowledge-based economy. In this context scientific knowledge is considered as the key resource of economic production and growth of innovations. Suchlike changes have a great influence on the understanding of the role of scientific research and its goals. As a consequence, traditional academic model of science is replaced by proprietary model, which includes application of the privatized scientific results in the short-run in order to achieve financial gain. Organization of the scientific activity in conformity with the proprietary model in the context of higher educational institutions promotes commodification of scientific knowledge ant its transformation into fictitious commodity. Aforementioned shift has a number of critical consequences for the scientific community and the whole humanity. The paper focuses on the normative aspects of scientific activity organization in Russian national research universities. Using qualitative and quantitative analyses of the normative documents of Russian universities author investigates main practices and principles of scientific activity organization and its factors. Results of the analyses were tested and supplemented with the use of interviewing. Besides a number of hypotheses were proposed for the future empirical research.