University publishing in Natural Sciences: trends and prospects

The leading tendencies of publishing in the Russian higher educational institutions engaged in preparation and release of issues on natural sciences are analysed. First of all, these are classical universities, to a lesser extent - technical, agricultural, medical, pedagogical colleges. Similar publishing work is conducted not only in the capital, but also, more actively, in other cities of the country. Among the revealed trends the most popular are publishing of issues of educational and scientific types, a significant place belongs to theses of reports at scientific conferences (congresses, symposiums) and materials of conferences (congresses, symposiums), providing expeditious communication in the sphere of natural sciences. The content of the issues becomes more interdisciplinary, which is important for the training of specialists capable to solve complex problems and to open and develop the breakthrough directions of the natural and interdisciplinary sciences and technologies. It is typical to reflect the regional specifics in the issues, which is mainly realized in subject fields of Earth and biological sciences. The works representing milestone stories of natural sciences displayed in the activity of faculties and chairs of the natural-science profile are actively published. Mixed groups of authors consisting of university and research organisation staff take part in creating the author's originals, which corresponds to the nation-wide concept of uniting of efforts of higher education and research institutions. University publishing departments and houses use the principle of series providing effective marketing communication. Most often the issues are collected in the book series by topic. In the article prospects of development of the natural-science book publishing in the university are discussed: the possibility of use of the issues projected by the university as a means of formation of media literacy of students helping them to understand the sphere of the natural-science knowledge as covered by mass media; the increase in number of names of electronic issues including those created on the basis of hypertext technologies; the improvement of quality of art, editorial and technical design, and the printing of issues. The conclusion that today the modern university becomes the centre of the innovative scientific, educational, publishing work, whose purposes consist in generation and effective distribution of the natural-science knowledge is drawn.

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