Impact of the Pandemic on the Condition of Agricultural Scientific and

Educational Information Resources Presented in the Internet Space

Victor Medennikov

, Ludmila Muratova

and Sergey Salnikov

Federal Research Center "Computer Science and Control" of RAS, Vavilova 44-2, 119333, Moscow, Russia

VIAPI n.a. A.A. Nikonov - branch of the FSBSIFRC AESDRA VNIIESH, Bolshoi Kharitonyevsky 21-1,

107078, Moscow, Russia

Keywords: Pandemic, Scientific and Educational Resources, Internet Space.

Abstract: The paper discusses the changes in the structure and condition of scientific and educational information

resources that have been made available by Russian agricultural universities in the Internet space during the

pandemic in terms of emerging new digital tools in the educational process. We have also monitored the

impact of the "social order" requiring to create a structured information Internet space for these resources that

plays a triune role: supporting the scientific research; raising the education level (sometimes, trough re-

training) for all population segments; an efficient system of transferring scientific and educational knowledge

to the economy by providing an unrestricted access to this knowledge not only for traditional users represented

by researchers, students and teachers, but also for future applicants, employers, public authorities,

manufacturers, businesses, managers and other categories of population. To monitor this process, we have

developed the relevant method for surveying universities' websites. Our analysis of the results of this survey

in 2021 and in 2013, 2016 confirmed our assumption that the pandemic will cause the emergence of new

digital tools but only in the field of online learning and publication activity, which are aimed solely at the

internal audience of universities through closing such resources by adding passwords for accessing them by

other interested users. At the same time, the digital tools being introduced are ontologically unrelated to each

other; they duplicate the content, which leads to significant financial costs for universities and the state, thus

postponing the future creation of some structured information Internet space for scientific and educational

resources.

1 INTRODUCTION

The social order for creating some structured

information Internet space of scientific and

educational resources, being driven by the

coronavirus pandemic, has mainly manifested in the

emergence of new digital tools in the educational

process in the form of online learning and publication

activity. Such an activation of the social order was

due to the need for switching universities to online

learning and remote working. The entire world and

Russian educational process is in need of such digital

transformation. For these critical industries to meet

new challenges, their systemic transformation is

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4485-7132

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4030-0599

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7952-4496

required towards creating a modern competitive

scientific and educational environment.

The pandemic has especially exacerbated the

competitiveness problem of this process with a sharp

increase in the importance of universities' images. In

(The educational, 2021), this problem is most clearly

defined: on the one hand, significant investments are

required in the new digital online educational

technology, and on the other hand, the pandemic has

reduced the income of educational institutions due to

a decrease in the effective demand by families as well

as the influx of applicants from abroad, etc. Today,

the image of a university depends not only on the

quality of its educational process; of great importance

is also its competent and effective representation on

the Internet.

Medennikov, V., Muratova, L. and Salnikov, S.

Impact of the Pandemic on the Condition of Agricultural Scientiﬁc and Educational Information Resources Presented in the Internet Space.

DOI: 10.5220/0011111900003439

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference "COVID-19: Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals" (RTCOV 2021), pages 137-142

ISBN: 978-989-758-617-0

137

In this study, we have considered one of the ways

to increase the competitiveness of educational

institutions using the example of agricultural

universities by assessing the effectiveness of their use

of scientific and educational information resources

(SEIRs) in the Internet space, which makes it possible

to adequately assess the position of an agricultural

university in the world ranking of educational

services (Medennikov, 2017), followed by making

decisions on the areas to invest in. For this purpose,

we need to develop an appropriate method and

questionnaire. In the digital economy (DE), their

websites are one of the most effective ways of such

an assessment.

Based on the main, general principle of digital

transformation of all sectors of economy, including

education and science, in the form of creating an

information management system; that is, collection,

processing, storage, and dissemination of the

necessary data in a form adapted to the daily activities

of institutions, based on the widespread integration of

disparate data into a single system, the social order

driven by the pandemic should also generate a

demand for integration methods to present SEIRs not

only to students and teachers of a particular

university, but also to future applicants, employers,

researchers, public authorities, manufacturers,

businesses, managers and other population segments.

There are appropriate opportunities to do this (Kulba,

2020; Zatsarinnyy, 2019; Ereshko, 2018).

2 RESEARCH METHOD

In (Ereshko, 2020; Medennikov, 2017), the authors

have considered the concept and a mathematical

model for creating a single cloud-based digital

platform of scientific and educational information

resources (DPSEIR), based on its triune role.

First, it should be informatization of the science

itself. There, the DPSEIR should be created because

of the exponential growth in the amount of

information in science, the emerging opportunity to

create new information technology that ensures an

efficient mining of the necessary knowledge.

Information technology, primarily based on the

Internet, has provided the scientific community with

qualitatively new opportunities for a wide exchange

of ideas between researchers and information

scientific resources and for their digital interaction

(Raikov, 2019).

Second, information technology can perform the

functions of stimulating scientific and technological

progress only with a certain level of intellectual

potential of society, and the key role in its creation is

played by the education system. Once again, in the

process of transforming scientific knowledge into

educational one, information computer technology

(ICT) plays a great role. For instance, it is shown in

(Milgrom, 1990) that investment in ICT are more

effective with a high level of two other

complementary assets, organizational and human

capital. That is, investments in ICT are associated

with significant costs of changing organizational and

human capital, depending to a large extent on

education.

Third, the DPSEIR in the Internet space provides

an effective system for the transfer of scientific

knowledge to the economy; it promotes the

development of scientific concepts of the digital

economy (DE), its digital platforms, scientific

support and monitoring of the digitalization process

of the country, industries, businesses, territorial

entities and society. Thus, the business community

implicitly expresses its requirements for the need to

create such a space. When surveying agricultural

companies to assess the effectiveness of their

information and consulting services (ICS), farmers

expressed a desire to get such a system where they

could quickly find, e.g., a development in the form of

a means for combating any plant or animal disease;

then get immediately all publications, all consultants,

regulatory information, and online learning on this

topic. Next, they could find the required supplier of

the formulation in the relevant database with

minimum procurement and logistics costs.

A large-scale survey of the needs of farmers in 22

regions by visiting them with a survey of public

authorities and businesses has showed that the

following types of knowledge representations are

most in demand in the Russian economy:

developments, publications, consulting activities,

regulatory information (RI), online learning (OL),

application software packages (ASP) and databases

(DB). It turned out that these types of knowledge are

available in one form or another on the websites of

scientific and educational institutions and the ICS

(Medennikov, 2017).

It has been shown that improvement of the

Internet technology allows for integrating, based on

them, the ontological modeling into a single DPSEIR

from a unified scientific and methodological

standpoint with a simple and user-friendly navigation

system, followed by hosting these resources at one

provider based on common classifiers, such as the

state heading list of scientific and technical

information and industry-wide product classifier.

However, to present heterogeneous website structures

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as homogeneous structures (given that, in line with

modern trends in the Internet technology, when

providers begin to offer services for storing website

content in powerful database management systems),

it was generally accepted that SEIRs should be stored,

on the one hand, in the form of catalogs or a full-

format electronic presentation, and on the other hand,

as an unordered list or as an ordered electronic

presentation.

Therefore, the need to create a DPSEIR is due, on

the one hand, to the demands of the digital economy,

which requires a significant number of highly

qualified specialists, a comprehensive renovation of

production facilities, retraining of employees of all

levels and migrating to modern management

methods; and on the other hand, the ICT capabilities

to integrate all scientific and educational resources

into a single information space of knowledge from a

unified scientific and technological standpoint with

placing information resources (IR) in the cloud using

unified registers and classifiers.

In addition, this project allows to implement a

scientometric approach, a quantitative assessment of

the role of educational and scientific institutions,

publications and their authors worldwide in a

particular field of research; to calculate various

rankings of scientific research in economics and

related fields; to evaluate the effectiveness of

scientific activities of a particular institution or an

author; to determine the dynamics of authors’ h-

indices, the number of citations and their ranking,

similarly to the Russian Science Citation Index

(RSCI), but with a tool that is understandable and

open to most users of this data in the global network,

which makes it possible to adequately assess the place

of such institution or author in the global scientific

and educational environment. This possibility is

implemented using various subprojects-services

stored in various DBs, similar to the RePec system.

In this regard, we would like to hope that a sharp

surge of interest in online learning, electronic

catalogs, and full-format electronic presentation of

publications will be a trigger for creating a DPSEIR,

which includes all these elements.

Therefore, based on the briefly outlined

conceptual provisions of the method for examining

the condition and amount of SEIRs on the websites of

agricultural universities, Table 1 shows the survey

questionnaire in a generalized form at the levels of

departments, faculties, and universities, in

quantitative terms by types of knowledge

presentations.

3 RESEARCH RESULTS

In this section, we discuss the summary SEIR

representation on agricultural universities' websites

with our comments on individual institutions, in

comparison with similar data from SEIR surveys

carried out in 2013 and 2016 (Medennikov, 2017),

(Medennikov, 2014). The values of indices for 2013,

2016 and 2021 are divided by slashes.

3.1 Developments

In 2013, 85% of universities posted information about

their developments on their websites; in 2016,

similarly, 46 out of 54 (85%) did so. The increase in

the number of developments was 93.6%, but this

increase was provided only by 10 universities; other

institutions either reduced or stopped publishing

information about their developments. It should be

noted that several websites have published electronic

catalogs and a full-format presentation of

developments. However, this means publishing

development catalogs on three websites, rather than

posting information about them in a database

management system (DBMS). In 2021, these

universities have stopped publishing this information,

but six new leaders have appeared, who dramatically

increased the availability of unordered full-format

presentations up to 567 items on their websites. At the

same time, both electronic catalogs and full-format

presentations of developments have completely

disappeared with a significant reduction in the

number of items in an unordered catalog list.

3.2 Publications

In 2013, 93% of universities provided information

about publications on their websites; in 2016, their

share was already 89%, that is, 48 out of 54. However,

an increase in publications took place only in

departments (3.3%) with a significant decrease in

faculties (2.6 times); at the university level, the

decrease is even greater (6.5 times). This decrease

was due to the following universities: Bryansk State

Agrarian University (SAU), Velikiye Luki State

Agricultural Academy (SAA), Gorsky SAU, Kuban

SAU, and Omsk SAU. It should be noted that Kuban

SAU has already an electronic catalog and a full-

format presentation of publications. In 2021, the

pandemic has forced a dramatic change in the

structure of evolutionary forms of storing

publications. Thus, a large number of electronic

library systems (ELS) appeared in the market, which

agricultural universities began to take as an example:

Impact of the Pandemic on the Condition of Agricultural Scientiﬁc and Educational Information Resources Presented in the Internet Space

139

Table 1: Questionnaire for surveying the condition and amount of SEIRs on the websites of agricultural universities.

University and

resentation level

Unordered catalog

list

Electronic

catalo

Unordered full-format

resentation

Ordered full-format

resentation

Name

Department

Faculty

University level

……………….

Total

IRBIS64, IRBIS64+, Ruslan, Mark Web, MegaPro,

Booki, Znanium, Youwrite, IPRbooks, AgriLib, the

Network Electronic Library of Agricultural

Universities under the auspices of the Lan' publishing

house (over 8,000 books), and a number of less used

resources. Accordingly, there was a sharp increase in

the number of publications in an electronic catalog

form up to 55,082 and 21,114 items made available

as a full-format presentation of publications of

university's staff and students. Most of the above-

listed ELSs support electronic catalogs only.

We are drawing your attention to this fact since

these ELSs include a significant number of

publications from other institutions, other than the

university in question. At the same time, there is a

trend to decreasing the number of publications in the

previously dominant forms. In general, the picture is

variegated both in developments and in publications;

we cannot find the presence of anyone's coordinating

hand. In addition, you can get access to an ELS only

with a password; only some of them allow access as

a guest to catalog forms.

3.3 Databases

In 2013, only seven universities (12%) presented DB

information on their websites, mostly in the form of

an unordered catalog list, and six universities (11%)

in 2016. In 2016, there was a sharp surge in the

number: 24.7 times. Two universities: Russian State

Agrarian University – Moscow Agricultural

Academy (RSAU–MAA) posted 145 DBs on its

website (only at the top level) in the form of an

electronic catalog, whereas Kuban SAU presented

them in the form of an unordered list (538, 4 of which

at departments, 7 at faculties, and 527 at the

university level). There is no way to check these DBs

for operability. In 2021, there was an almost complete

degradation (zeroing) of this type of knowledge

presentation; only on the websites of three

universities, information about seven DBs is still

available, by inertia, in the form of an unordered

catalog list.

3.4 ASP

In 2013, only 10 universities (17%) presented ASP

information on their websites, mostly in the form of

an unordered catalog list (80 at the department level

and 42 at the top level) and 13 universities (24%) in

2016. In 2016, there was also a sharp increase in the

number: 7.5 times, up to 151 at the department level

and 828 at the university level. The overlap between

the two university lists is minimal: only two of them

continued publishing information about ASP on

websites both in 2013 and in 2016: Kuban SAU and

Orenburg SAU. In 2021, there was an almost

complete change of leaders: Kuban SAU and

Orenburg SAU stopped publishing ASP, but

Stavropol SAU took up the lion's share of this type of

knowledge presentation at the department level (50

out of 57), whereas Ryazan State Agrotechnological

University (SATU) and Bashkiria SAU, at the top

level (13 and 7, respectively). It is also impossible to

check their operability. It is worth noting that these

websites have no online development: neither ASP,

nor DB. This is due to the fact that, currently, the vast

majority of providers do not offer services for using

optimized and statistical ASPs, not even Excel. Some

providers render services only for using a DBMS.

3.5 Online Learning

In 2013, only five universities provided more than

one OL item of information on their websites, mainly

in the form of an unordered catalog list, and six

universities provided it in 2016, the same form. In

2016, there was a sharp increase in the number:

almost 2 times from 620 to 1,194. There is no overlap

between the two university lists. This also suggests

that the SEIRs presentation on websites is at the

discretion (fantasy) of their developers. In 2021, there

was a sharp change in the number in the opposite

direction: from 1,194 to 11. The main reason for this

was the pandemic, which forced the universities'

administrations to implement a special OL service

that could be accessed only with a password received

in certain institution departments.

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3.6 Consulting Activities

In 2013, this type of activity was mainly presented on

the website of Ryazan SATU (51 consultants), due to

the fact that the ICS actively worked in Ryazan in the

past. In 2016, there was a sharp increase both in the

number of consultants: 3.5 times, and in the number

of universities: over 14. However, there is only one

consultant left in Ryazan SATU. Meanwhile, in 2016,

information about 189 consultants was made

available in departments (9 of which in the form of an

electronic catalog; the rest, as an unordered catalog

list), but it almost disappeared as soon as in 2021 (one

consultant in the form of an unordered catalog list).

On the contrary, the departments demonstrated a

decrease from seven in 2013 to four in 2016 with a

sharp increase up to 37 consultants in 2021, all in the

form of an unordered catalog list. At the university

level, similar dynamics was recorded: 62 in 2013, 216

in 2016 (43 of which in the form of an electronic

catalog, the rest, as an unordered catalog list), and 76

in 2021 in the form of an unordered catalog list.

There, the pandemic played a negative role, having

left only information in the form of an unordered

catalog list with a significant decrease in the number

of consultants.

3.7 Regulatory Information

In 2013, this information was published on websites

of 39 universities: 299 items in the form of an

unordered catalog list, 936 items, as an unordered

full-format electronic presentation, and 1,385 in the

form of an ordered full-format electronic

presentation. In 2016, there was a sharp decrease

from 299 to 65, from 936 to 328, and from 1,385 to

19, respectively. This is apparently due to the great

complexity of maintaining this type of information

resource, especially in the absence of a DBMS. In

2021, on the contrary, there was a sharp increase in

RI items in the form of an unordered catalog list (up

to 15,800); a reduction of their number in the form of

an ordered full-format electronic presentation from

328 to 134, and their liquidation in the form of an

ordered full-format electronic presentation. Such

multidirectional trends can be explained, on the one

hand, by the relevance of RI during the pandemic and,

on the other hand, the complexity of maintaining

them on a website due to the lack of methodological

guidance from the Ministry of Education and Science

and the Ministry of Agriculture.

Table 2: Summarized indicators of the condition and amount of SEIRs by types of knowledge presentation on the websites

of agricultural universities in quantitative terms (2013/2016/2021).

Type of knowledge

presentation by levels

Unordered catalog list Electronic catalog Unordered full-format

presentation

Ordered full-format

presentation

Developments

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

2212/2106/1624

1646/257/252

885/3684/2792

32/52/0

29/17/0

461/391/0

1/3/18

1/0/0

246/337/567

0/0/0

1/132/0

0/248/0

Publications

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

56270/53472/66859

10093/3743/1388

23172/18649/14034

17/335/254

13/5/0

100405/408/55082

386/4634/2246

11/86/3

2852/344/345

2/96/0

2/0/0

6/0/21114

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

15/07/07

1/7/0

6/530/0

0/2/0

1/0/0

0/145/0

0/0/0

1/0/0

0/0/0

1/0/0

0/0/0

ASP

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

80/151/57

1/0/0

42/828/20

1/0/0

8/2/0

0/0/0

1/0/0

0/25/0

0/0/0

1/0/0

0/0/0

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

0/8/1

97/5/1

620/1194/11

0/7/0

0/0/0

0/5/0

0/0/0

0/2/0

0/0/0

0/3/0

Consultations

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

0/189/1

7/4/37

62/216/76

0/9/0

0/0/0

0/43/0

0/0/0

0/9/0

0/1/0

0/3/0

0/0/0

Department

Faculty

Universit

level

185/52/13409

1/1/419

299/65/1972

0/0/0

1/0/0

0/0/0

36/2/0

27/16/36

936/328/92

0/0/0

1/1/0

1385/19/0

Impact of the Pandemic on the Condition of Agricultural Scientiﬁc and Educational Information Resources Presented in the Internet Space

141

4 CONCLUSIONS

Our research has confirmed the assumption that

pandemic will promote creating new digital tools in

the field of online learning and publication activity;

but their implementation raises many questions about

the technology for designing and deploying these

systems, the weak methodological role of the

Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry

of Agriculture, which contradicts the basic principles

of digitalization of society.

First of all, a non-systematic approach to

implementing a large number of ELSs that are

ontologically unrelated to each other and duplicate

the content (when you have to digitize the same

material dozens of times, which leads to significant

financial costs for universities and the state)

postpones the future creation of a DPSEIR which

plays the above triune role: supporting the scientific

research, raising the education level for all population

segments, and an effective system for transferring

knowledge to the economy. The current course of

digital transformation in education gives rise to

disintegration methods for presenting SEIRs to the

above user groups. At the same time, the presentation

of online learning and publication activity is

improved at the expense of other types of knowledge

presentations, which also does not promote creating a

modern competitive scientific and educational

environment.

This approach is also observed in the

digitalization of agriculture, which is outsourced to

large agricultural holdings, raising doubts that

creating technological platforms for DE the by state

corporations and agricultural holdings, without a

single concept, architecture, standards, and a general

designer with his own scientific and pilot production

base, would lead to their integration in the future.

After enough time has passed since this program was

adopted in the country, we can see the negative

effects of such a decision on the example of university

websites. In addition, digital feudalism gave rise to

the illusion of the uselessness of scientific institutions

engaged in digitalization of society, economy, and

science in a comprehensive manner from a systemic

standpoint.

The lack of demand for science by the economy

and society has allowed illiterate and quirky

managers to lead the process of informatization in the

industry. It is enough to mention the statements that

the main result of the DE program should be an

increase in the number of farmers' Internet

connections (Petrikov, 2021).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by RFBR (grant № 20-07-

00836)

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