Concept, Features and Legal Nature of Global Research Infrastructure

The term “unique scientific installation of the mega-science class” has firmly entered the circulation of legal acts of a program nature, which makes it necessary to study it from a legal point of view, to determine the relationship of this concept with the widely recognized term “global research infrastructure”. Based on the analysis of legal acts, program documents and doctrinal sources, two key features of “unique scientific installations of the mega-science class” can be distinguished: large scale (physical, financial, technological) and special significance for science, which allows for a certain breakthrough in a particular field of knowledge. The study of the essence of global research infrastructures suggests the following definition. It is constructed and operated through international cooperation (collaboration) of states, international organizations and other actors that do not have an international legal personality (government agencies, scientific institutions, funding institutions), physically large, expensive, unique in terms of technical characteristics equipment sets intended for long-term scientific research aimed at obtaining new breakthrough knowledge, significantly supplementing or changing ideas about the reality. Domestic term “unique scientific installation of “mega-science” (international) class” has the longest match with such global research infrastructure as geographically localized (single-sited) major research infrastructure. In order to bring legal terminology on “mega-science” into line with the global one, amendments should be made to the draft federal law “On Scientific, Scientific and Technical and Innovative Activities”.

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