The draft federal la w on science -a new format of legal regulation of scientific and innovation activities

Introduction: the article provides a retrospective analysis of the legislation of the Russian Federation on science and presents a descriptive forecast of the changes that will arise from the adoption of the federal law "On Scientific, Scientific-Technical and Innovation Activities in the Russian Federation". In the article, the main attention is paid to the formal legal description of the current legislation and the federal law currently under development, as well as to the questions being of great importance for the Russian legislation on science, namely: the legal status of a scientist, the system of scientific organizations and scientific infrastructure, the classification of types (fields) of scientific activities, science and innovation in terms of legal regulation etc. Purpose: based on the analysis of the current legislation and modern scientific doctrine, to justify the need to develop a draft of a new framework act in the sphere of science; to describe the system and structural changes in legislation that will follow its adoption. Methods: the research is based on the combination of the formal legal analysis applied to texts of legal acts and methods of system analysis, forecasting and modeling, as well as the comparative law method. Results: the article gives a description of the system of Russian legal acts on science. It also justifies the structure of the draft federal law "On Scientific, Scientific-Technical and Innovation Activities in the Russian Federation" and content of its basic institutes. Conclusion: efficiency of the state policy in the scientific-technical sphere is characterized by the presence of the relevant legislation. This legislation should be consistent, receptive to aims, tasks and methods of the state strategic planning, should be in harmony with norms of other branches of legislation, and correspond to demands of Russian economy and international trends. The draft federal law "On Scientific, Scientific-Technical and Innovation Activities in the Russian Federation" meets these criteria, while the federal law currently in force "On Science and State Scientific-Technical Policy " was revealed to have some drawbacks.