American publisher Pleiades Publishing has informed 108 Russian scientific journals that it will stop producing their English-language editions and distributing them through its channels. The company stated that the move is due to the upcoming expiration of its contract with Springer Nature on December 31, 2026. Under that agreement, the journals were included in Springer Nature’s publishing package. T-invariant spoke with editors and researchers to understand how they view the implications of this decision.
Timeline of the Conflict
The termination of the agreements did not come as a surprise: mutual grievances had been accumulating throughout the 35-year history of the partnership between Pleiades Publishing and Springer Nature.
1993. Pleiades began cooperating with Springer Nature to distribute English-language versions of Russian scientific journals, including those of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). As scientific journals transitioned to electronic format, university libraries worldwide began subscribing to large packages instead of individual titles. One of the largest such packages belonged to Springer (later Springer Nature). The partnership with Pleiades ensured that English versions of RAS journals were included in this package, giving them access to a vast global audience via the SpringerLink platform. According to Pleiades Publishing CEO Alexander Shustorovich, the partnership significantly improved operating conditions: the journals gained access to the world’s leading publishing platform, modern technologies, and stable royalties.
2007–2010. The Russian Library of Science was created, expanding the body of RAS journals by incorporating articles from other scientific sources. According to data cited by Shustorovich, this doubled the volume of Russian scientific information available in the global arena, brought more than a hundred new journals to market, raising the total to 250 — and improved the quality of the publication flow.
However, this process had a downside. All journals in the Springer package were required to meet minimum standards: publication in English and an international scope. The latter meant that scientists from any country could submit articles — provided they passed peer review.
As a result, manuscripts from foreign authors — primarily from China, India, Iran, and Turkey, often originally submitted in English — began appearing in the English versions of RAS journals. The rejection rate for such submissions was higher than for Russian authors, but over time they came to account for a significant share of publications in some journals — up to 50% in certain cases. Consequently, the content of the Russian- and English-language versions of the same journal was no longer identical.
2015. Academician Valery Dolgopolov, editor-in-chief of the journal Letters to JETP, criticized the publication delays of the translated version: “To survive, we need to transform from Russian journals into international ones (like Nature and Science). This process is being slowed by the fact that the translated version appears on the Springer website with a considerable delay compared to the Russian one. If we could reduce this lag to a month, then given our speed of peer review and production of the Russian version, we would have a real chance to become an international journal of short, urgent communications.”
2016. Pleiades extended until the end of 2021 its contract with Springer Nature for the distribution of the Russian Library of Science package, which included more than 240 journals formed by Pleiades Publishing based on Russian-language RAS publications.
2017. Acting director of the Nauka publishing house Sergei Palatkin sent a letter to Springer Nature accusing it of alleged copyright infringement. According to him, Nauka handled editing, peer review, design, and illustrations. “All this work is carried out by employees of the Nauka publishing house; therefore, the results of this work are the intellectual property of Nauka, protected in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and international agreements: the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works,” the letter stated. Palatkin also noted that Nauka had not participated in negotiations on translation, publication, and distribution of the journals, meaning its intellectual rights had been violated.
In response, the chairman of the RAS Scientific Publishing Council and vice president of the RAS, Anatoly Grigoriev, wrote to Pleiades Publishing that Nauka’s claims were unfounded: it was merely the publisher, not the founder of the academic journals. The founder is the Academy of Sciences, sometimes jointly with the relevant institutes. It is the RAS that carries out editorial and publishing activities under the law and receives federal budget funding for it. Academician Alexei Khokhlov described Palatkin’s letter as “like pencil vendors who supply Moscow State University via tender trying to tell the university what to do.”
Around that time, Pleiades Publishing CEO Alexander Shustorovich stated in an interview with the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences that foreign demand for English versions of RAS journals was low: “The average impact factor is lower than that of Western counterparts (for RAS journals in 2015, the average impact factor was 0.603), and the number of full-text downloads was significantly lower.”
In the same year, the Federation Council Committee on Science, Education, and Culture petitioned the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB requesting an audit of RAS agreements on the use of intellectual property concluded since the 1990s.
2019–2020. According to data presented by Academician Andrey Zabrodsky at a General Meeting of the RAS, Pleiades Publishing had registered trademarks for the names of 200 Russian journals in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, including about 100 academic publications. At the same time, the form of the author agreement for commissioned works — the document signed annually by the editor-in-chief outlining their relationship with Pleiades — was changed. Under the new version, the priority task became the creation of an English-language journal distinct from the Russian-language base version. A search of the U.S. trademark registry confirms the list of journals registered by Pleiades Publishing starting in 2019 — for example, the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of the earliest on the list.
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2022. Following the start of the war, broad international sanctions were imposed on Russia. Major Western subscribers — scientific foundations and other organizations — demanded that journals they funded stop publishing materials by Russian authors. Pleiades Publishing proposed limiting cooperation to Russian state institutions only, while continuing to work with individual authors.
“While we are committed to the need to maintain a free flow of information between scientists, we cannot continue to collaborate with state-owned or directed institutions in the Russian Federation,” the company stated in its 2022 press release. “In compliance with various international government regulations and in accordance with the wishes of our customers, we shall immediately discontinue all payments to such organizations and suspend the implementation of existing agreements. Our decision shall not affect the publication of our original English-language journals as they are created through contracts with scientists, authors and editors in their individual capacities without regard for race, religion, gender, ethnic origin or politics. Our collaboration with them will continue as before.”
Shustorovich explained that switching to contracts with individuals allowed Russian authors to remain in the global scientific space:
“This pressure had already been building on publishers, and we had to do a tremendous amount of work to, so to speak, push back against it,” he explained. “Thanks to our long-standing partnerships, we were able to maintain a ‘window’ for Russian authors. We adopted this new policy, and now it has largely been accepted by Western regulators. The result is that our scientific products, perceived as American publications, have been preserved on the understanding that they represent Russia’s scientific community. Of course, if Western academia had begun boycotting Russian citizens, individual authors would not have been admitted to Western journals either. Consider sports: how often athletes are banned from competitions solely on the basis of their passport. But I’m not responsible for sports, while in science individual scientists currently have the same access to Western readers as before. We created an important precedent and achieved support for this practice from all the world’s leading publishers — and this was done in the form of a joint statement. When I say ‘we,’ I of course mean Springer Nature and other respected colleagues who helped us.”
At the same time, the company revised the author agreement signed annually by the editor-in-chief. Among other things, Pleiades insisted on signing contracts directly with editors and authors of RAS journals — bypassing the Academy. This gave Pleiades Publishing the right to independently control the content of issues without any input from the RAS. Decisions about the content of the English-language journal effectively shifted to the hands of the publisher.
Not all editorial boards accepted the new terms. A number of major RAS institutes moved to self-publishing — including the Steklov Mathematical Institute, the Ioffe Institute, and the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry. As a result of this resistance, Pleiades stopped all payments, including author royalties and fees under the author agreement for commissioned works.
Meanwhile, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research launched its own peer-reviewed open-access journal that would be free for both readers and authors. An initiative working group was formed to develop the concept for the new publication.
February 8, 2024. Under government decree, the Nauka publishing house was granted the status of sole supplier of publishing services to the RAS for scientific journals and books. On the one hand, this eliminated the need for annual tenders for publishing services. On the other hand, at that time Nauka had not published any journals for more than five years because of tax debts exceeding half a billion rubles ($7m). It was clear that a high-level decision had been made to invest significant budget funds in the loss-making publishing house so that it could immediately begin producing more than 140 Russian-language academic journals.
Director of Nauka Nikolai Fedoseenkov stated his intention to increase the number of journals to 300 and ensure that RAS publications would not only become competitive in the international scientific periodicals market but could compete “on equal footing with major international publishers.”
August 2024. Pleiades representative Viktor Valyaev reported that for the vast majority of Pleiades journals, the publication schedule was being met. However, there was a group of journals in which editors-in-chief, at the urging of the RAS, were “slowing down” the transfer of materials. “We are negotiating with the RAS and hope for a successful resolution. We are inviting authors whose papers are ‘stuck’ to submit their work to our other journals in related fields.”
November 2024. Academician Alexei Khokhlov summed up the situation:
“On the RCSI website, issues of RAS journals for 2024 being posted gradually, but with a significant delay… The average delay is 6–7 months. Articles are published only in Russian, and the prospects for English translations are unclear. The article texts are available only in PDF format, and only from computers at organizations participating in the national subscription — they cannot be accessed from home computers… They are not indexed in Web of Science or Scopus. Therefore, most of the global scientific community has very limited access to these articles.”
December 2024. At a meeting of the Public Council under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Academician Vladislav Panchenko stated that in recent years Russian science had been losing the “national identity of its scientific periodicals.” According to him, Nauka publishes 45 issues a week: more than 12,000 articles in Russian and more than 7,000 in English. Meanwhile, many editorial boards first sent materials to Pleiades and only then published them in RAS journals.
Nikolai Fedoseenkov told the RAS Presidium that Nauka had developed an automated platform for translating scientific articles. Using artificial intelligence tools, it can recognize text and graphical elements and translate an article in 2–2.5 minutes. Testing is underway for translations into Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese. Scientists have expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the translations.
January 2025. RAS journals transitioned to a new format for interacting with authors: article are now submitted exclusively through the National Platform for Periodic Scientific Publications.
May 2025. Pleiades Publishing received notifications from Springer that Clarivate (owner of Web of Science) intended to freeze the impact factor for one year for four journals and invited justifications in appeals for high self-citation rates to be submitted by May 8. Appeals were filed; for the journal Acoustical Physics, Clarivate reversed its decision. For the other three journals, both the impact factor and quartile rankings were suspended for one year.
August 2025. On August 11, the appellate court upheld a Moscow Arbitration Court’s decision in the lawsuit filed by the Ioffe Institute regarding copyright infringement, ruling in favor of the institute. The court ordered the cessation of unlawful use and distribution of scientific articles without the transfer of copyright to Pleiades Publishing and awarded compensation of over 180 million rubles ($2.5m).
January 2026. On January 1, 108 editors-in-chief of RAS journals received a letter from Pleiades Publishing addressed to the Academy of Sciences and the co-founders of the journals. The company notified them that it would terminate of license agreements for the use of journal titles and distinctive features effective January 1, 2027. Under the terms of the agreements, the party refusing to extend them must provide notice at least 10 months in advance — the deadlines were met.
According to information from Academician Khokhlov, “the main ‘sticking point’ is Springer Nature’s requirement to ensure that 50% of articles are published in open-access model, meaning paid for by the authors. For journals that primarily publish articles by Russian authors, this is unrealistic. If scientists can scrape together the money for Open Access fees, sensible ones will prefer to send their articles to MDPI journals, where author service is substantially better.”
March 2026. On March 1, Springer Nature opened the subscription campaign for 2027. Negotiations between the RAS, Pleiades Publishing, and Springer Nature on extending the agreement to include English versions of Russian journals in the publishing package yielded no result. Cooperation with Springer Nature, at least for the coming year, can be considered over.
The Risk of Falling Out of Science
The editor-in-chief of the journal Stratigraphy and Geological Correlation, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Rogov, shared his assessment of the situation with T-invariant:
“A significant portion of the journals of the Academy of Sciences were founded back in Soviet times, and some journals — for example, Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Izvestiya RAN) or Proceedings of the Russian Mineralogical Society (Zapiski RMO) — have been published since the 19th century. In the postwar years, the rapid growth of science both in the USSR and globally led to a sharp increase in the number of scientific periodicals. As a rule, new journals were established by the Academy of Sciences (less often by its branches) with the active participation of co-founders — research institutes. At the same time, a substantial part of the leading Soviet journals (primarily in the natural and technical sciences) were fully or partially translated into English and published abroad starting in the 1950s–60s. The print runs of these translated editions were relatively small, but their publication remained commercially viable. Beginning in 1992, the translation and distribution of Russian academic journals shifted to the International Academic Publishing Company (MAIK) — a company established by the RAS, Pleiades Publishing, and the Nauka publishing house. From 2007 onward, judging by the changed formatting of the translated versions of articles (the header “MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica (Russia)” was replaced by Pleiades Publishing, Ltd), publication of the translated versions passed to Pleiades Publishing itself, while the electronic versions began to be distributed through Springer Nature. Relations between the RAS and Pleiades were not always smooth. On the one hand, the company provided prompt (though of mediocre quality) translations and wide international distribution of the journals. On the other, it showed little desire to share the steadily growing profits, and in 2019–2020 it registered trademark rights to the English-language titles of Russian journals in its own name. The practical consequences of this step became apparent later: when the Ioffe Institute terminated its agreements with Pleiades in early 2022 and began publishing English versions of its journals independently, Pleiades continued to release editions with the same titles — but featuring different content and new editorial boards. International databases still index the Pleiades content.”
The publication of the Russian-language versions of the journals in the early 2020s was handled by various publishers on a competitive basis; for some journals publishers changed every year or two — during that period Nauka was unable to produce journals due to substantial debts and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
In February 2024, Government Decree No. 281-r was adopted, designating Nauka as the sole publisher of RAS journals. The publishing house soon began operations. New issues were posted on a specially created online platform, RCSI (Russian Center for Scientific Information, the former Russian Foundation for Basic Research, RFBR). Access for employees of educational and research organizations via IP address remains free. From the very beginning, issues were published with significant delays. This was due not only to the slow pace of production but also to the publisher’s commercial model: new issues typically appeared first on the elibrary.ru platform (available by subscription or on a pay-per-view basis) and only weeks or months later on the RCSI website. In some cases, the delays are still ongoing: as of mid-February 2026, not a single current year’s issue had yet appeared on the platform, and for some journals the final issues of 2025 remain unpublished.
Other changes occurred after the journals came under Nauka’s management. Editorial boards received a new draft of the publishing agreement, which immediately led to a legal conflict. Authors traditionally would sign two agreements: one for the Russian-language version with the domestic publisher, and another for the translated version with Pleiades. Under the new agreement, the rights to translate the articles were also transferred to Nauka — meaning authors were simultaneously ceding these rights to two different publishers.
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The “Nauka” publishing house attempted to produce translated versions of the journals, but in a rather peculiar form. First, translations were carried out using artificial intelligence — something then-director Fedoseenkov repeatedly and enthusiastically promoted. Judging by the quality of the results, there was no editorial involvement. No matter how much authors criticized Pleiades translations, they looked relatively acceptable compared to Nauka’s output. Second, Nauka had virtually no distribution system for its translations: they were produced purely for internal reporting purposes and were inaccessible to potential readers. Third, they were published with a significant delay even relative to the already late Russian versions. Here, credit should be given to Pleiades: their translations were always published promptly, often ahead of the Russian-language versions of the same articles. As a result, in 2024–2025, authors received machine translations of their works from Nauka for approval months after the same articles had already been published in Pleiades editions. Fourth, from the very beginning Nauka did not restrict itself to English and began translations into other languages, including Chinese. Assessing the quality of these translations is difficult, especially since they are also not distributed. At the same time, the very need for Chinese translations is questionable. Chinese colleagues working in science generally have a sufficient command of English to read journals in English translation. China publishes many scientific journals in Chinese, and there are also bilingual editions. However, based on my experience communicating with Chinese colleagues in the natural sciences, they focus on international English-language journals, while publications in Chinese are viewed more as a training ground for students and master’s students; graduate students are required to publish in recognized international outlets.
On November 7, 2025, RAS President Gennady Krasnikov issued Directive No. 10007-1386, regulating the activities of the Academy’s scientific journals. Editorial boards were informed of it almost immediately. Key points to note are paragraph 7 (concerning the publisher of the English version, which is formally the RAS) and Appendix 2, which sets out the general formatting rules. The requirement to translate reference lists, figure captions, and a number of other elements into English suggests that the journals are being prepared for indexing of their Russian-language versions in Scopus — and that infrastructure is being built in advance to allow discontinuing translated versions if necessary.
It was clear that the journals could not remain in this situation for long. I had no doubt that the RAS was preparing to terminate the license agreements with Pleiades; however, in the end Pleiades was the first to act. Editors-in-chief received a notification from company president Shustorovich, dated December 25, 2025, stating that because of repeated violations of the license agreements by Nauka, the company was would cease publishing the journals starting in 2027.
What is the outcome? The English-language titles of the journals are registered to Pleiades Publishing. Court litigation, as the experience of the Ioffe Institute shows, yield no meaningful results — except perhaps moral satisfaction. This means that starting in 2027, the translated journals may disappear from international databases. Whether they will continue to be translated and whether a distribution system will be organized remains completely unclear. The RAS remains silent. The last meeting of editors-in-chief with the leadership of Nauka, the RAS Publishing Department, and the RAS Scientific Publishing Council took place at the end of 2024; the date of the next meeting is unknown.
In the best-case scenario, if Nauka manages to establish prompt and high-quality translation along with a distribution system, the journals could return to Scopus under new titles. However, given the experience of working with Nauka and the RAS Scientific Publishing Council, hopes for such an outcome remain slim. Most journals risk falling out of the global scientific community — even if foreign colleagues become interested in the results, they will have no way to download the articles from either the RCSI website or elibrary.ru. What options remain for authors? For those who publish primarily for internal reporting purposes, practically nothing will change: all the journals in question are included in the White List, which has been in effect since 2025. The Russian Science Foundation still prioritizes journals from international databases, though changes there cannot be ruled out. For those who write to be read, the situation sends an clear signal: if the results are of interest to the global scientific community, it is better to publish directly in English and submit the manuscript to an international journal.
Since I have been directly involved in the work of the editorial board only since 2019, my understanding of earlier events may be incomplete or inaccurate. Likewise, my assessment of the current situation is based on the information at my disposal and may not take into account other important factors that are unknown.”
Economics of Translated Versions
Mikhail Rogov describes the situation from within an editorial board involved in the conflict. The experience of journals that managed to exit the Pleiades system on their own looks rather different. A member of the editorial board of one such Russian journal shared his perspective, who wished to remain anonymous.
“The story began around 2000. The idea emerged to translate RAS scientific journals into English. Via Pleiades, an agreement was reached with Springer. This led to the emergence of various journals titled Russian Journal of… For example, the RAS had the journal Ontogenez. Its English version was called Russian Journal of Developmental Biology. Many journals agreed to this because Scopus was being developed at the time, and these translated versions were automatically included in the database.”
There were also special arrangements. In 2010, the journals Ecological Genetics (St. Petersburg) and Vavilov Journal of Genetics and Breeding (Novosibirsk) created a joint English-language version — Russian Journal of Genetics: Applied Research. As colleagues told me, a separate agreement was signed with Springer. This agreement was initially quite onerous, admittedly. But after six months of intense correspondence, we managed to eliminate the most onerous clauses. As a result, Springer received exclusive rights to translate and publish the content of our Russian journals.
According available statistics, the Russian Academy of Sciences is a founder of 141 Russian scientific journals. Of these, 134 journals belong to professional associations and academic structures. In addition, there are journals from regional branches of the RAS (about 30) and journals of RAS institutes (about 70). In total, this amounts to roughly 240 journals associated with the Academy.
As for indexing, almost all translated (English-language) versions of the journals are indexed in Scopus, although some have been excluded in recent years due to quality metrics. At the same time, the original Russian-language versions of RAS journals are much less visible in international databases: only 24 such journals are currently in Scopus, and 13 in Web of Science. In the Russian indexing system (RSCI), 139 RAS journals are included as part of the project to form a list of the best Russian scientific publications.
It was later decided that publications in journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science would be considered equivalent to publications in journals from the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) list. This meant that researchers could publish in these journals and count the articles for their dissertation defense without the need for additional approval from the VAK list. Subsequently, all journals on the VAK list were divided into categories (from first to fourth).”
The T-invariant interviewee explains how this system worked in practice for most researchers:
“Planning to submit your dissertation, but the journal you published in is not in Scopus? No problem: most likely its translated version is in Scopus. And that’s the top category in the VAK list. So for a while everyone things worked smoothly. On October 24, 2024, 140 RAS journals registered their online versions with Roskomnadzor. This is easily explained: to apply for inclusion in the VAK list, one must be registered according to the Law on mass media. Earlier, the translated versions — the various Russian Journal of … titles — were not registered with Roskomnadzor prior to October 2024: formally, they were not considered mass media in the Russian Federation.”
For many editors-in-chief, the registration of the English titles of their journals in Russia came as a surprise: they were unaware that the English version had been registered — and under the exact same name used by Pleiades and distributed by Springer, i.e., not as a transliteration but precisely as Russian Journal of …. Why? No one could explain it to me. As a result, editors-in-chief of RAS journals received a letter stating that changes were made to the journal titles without prior notification to the publisher (Pleiades Publishing) — the titles now included the English names of the licensed editions used by the publisher, whereas exclusive rights to use these names during the term of the license agreements are held by the publisher.
For example, the journal Genetika itself is not in Scopus, but its translated version — Russian Journal of Genetics — is indexed, and publications there are recognized by VAK. Suddenly an online version appears with a dual title: “Genetika / Russian Journal of Genetics.” Springer predictably raised objections: the journal title was changed without agreement, while a license agreement is in effect under which the editorial board transfers Russian-language texts for translation. In addition, Springer reserves the right to demand compensation for damages related to such violations and non-fulfillment of the license agreement by the co-founders, which may lead to the agreement’s early termination. Formally, the agreement has not yet been terminated, but such a possibility has been noted.
Under the terms of the agreement, the parties were given 10 months’ notice of termination. The letter also stated that, “despite the above, given its consistent constructive policy, Pleiades is prepared to continue cooperation with the journals, co-founders, and editorial boards on other platforms and in light of the realities of the global scientific publishing and translation market.” From the outside, the situation may look like an institutional conflict unfolding according to a pre-written script. In Russia, use of a similar title is quite permissible, and registering the title of an already existing journal poses no risks. Globally, journals are identified in all databases by their ISSN number.
Imagine, for example, a journal called Stomatology. There are hundreds of journals on this topic, and there is no need to invent a unique name for each one — the country is often simply specified in parentheses. In any case, each such journal has its own ISSN.
The conflict between the Academy of Sciences and Pleiades has been going on for a long time. Several years ago the publishing house sent highly onerous contracts, which some editors-in-chief signed without carefully reviewing them.
“Of course, it is possible — and perhaps even necessary — to part ways with Pleiades. But this should have been done in a timely manner — when the renewal contract arrived. This is exactly what two of our genetics journals did. In total, as far as I know, four publications took this step. However, the risks must be soberly assessed. Springer is a major player in the publishing market, selling large subscription packages to universities. If you compare download metrics for the journal Genetika and Russian Journal of Genetics, the latter’s are many times higher. By leaving Springer, you lose visibility and downloadability. Only two genetics journals at the time took the risk of terminating agreements with Pleiades — because their original versions had entered Scopus independently. They are now in the third and second quartiles of that database.”
There is still a year ahead. If the parties do not reach any agreement, the final issues will be translated by January 1, 2027. It is still unclear what degree seekers will do who need to publish in VAK list journals for defense of their dissertations (there are currently 24 such journals). Journals can apply for inclusion in Scopus on an expedited basis, but such review process takes from six months to two years from submission to decision. And there is almost a year left to try to negotiate with Pleiades.
No Comment
T-invariant requested comment from Pleiades Publishing — however, neither the press service nor the company’s management commented on the situation.
One key milestone has already been passed: on March 1, Springer Nature opened the subscription campaign for 2027. The agreement with Pleiades Publishing formally remains in effect until January 1, 2027. None of the parties to the conflict — neither the RAS, nor Nauka, nor Pleiades Publishing — has so far shown any readiness for dialogue. The question of how painful the end of this cooperation will be for each participant remains open. According to available information, the least vulnerable in this situation appears to be the Nauka publishing house, which has received monopoly status and budget funding. The most obvious losses are borne by ordinary Russian scientists: for them, the partnership with Pleiades meant not only publications in Scopus journals but also the opportunity to remain visible to the global scientific community — despite sanctions.
This conflict is commonly described as a clash of interests. But it is more accurately described by another formula: it is the logical outcome of a model in which the state has for decades funded science without building its own infrastructure for its international dissemination. Pleiades filled this vacuum — and secured a legally protected position within it. Now that the state has decided to fill this vacuum itself, it has turned out that the place is already occupied. It remains unclear whether Nauka possesses not only monopoly status but also the real ability to handle this task. Judging by two years of operation, there are few grounds for optimism.