Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Moscow, Russia:

V. Zh. Arens, Vice President, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, +7(499)237-47-16

Currently, contribution of mineral mining to the federal budget of Russia makes 60%, and around 90% of export of the country is mineral raw materials. Aiming to satisfy future demand of the country for mineral resources, it is necessary to advance the mining science. In a broad sense, the mining science is the knowledge on mineral exploration, mining and processing and the related technological advance. This is the foundation for training of specialists in mining. The mining science operates many specific notions and contains abundance of structural elements. The author retraces the history of transformation of the unified mining science into the system of specialized branches of mining sciences. Various classifications of mining sciences are reviewed. The author puts forward a new more strengthened classification of mining sciences composed of four cycles of sciences: geological, mining-technological, physico-technical and social-and economic. The classification hierarchy criterion can be applied to interpretation of cycles of mining sciences and their further downstream comprehensive description (an example of the description is given). Scientists should aim their joint effort to handling of urgent problems in mining with a view to obtain marketable products to competitive in the world market.
This publication is the discussion paper.

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