In the report, the author provides a comprehensive overview of issues related to tasks of increasing scientific activity of Russian scientists. The author offers an analysis of existing approaches to the concept of "academic activity" and various systems of indicators and models for evaluating academic activity of scientists in the humanities and social sciences; shows the characteristics and limitations of the entry of Russian scientists into the international professional scientific community at the current stage; assesses the processes of internationalization of professional activity, including taking into account the peculiarities of communication in the international scientific community. Various strategies to achieve the necessary indicators of "effective contracts" have been analyzed. Comparative analysis of the situation with "effective contracts" and incentive systems for academic activities of academic and university scientists is carried out; institutional and personal cases are examined. The possible and practical systems of rating of researchers in the fields of humanitarian knowledge and social sciences are described. An assessment is made of the actual and symbolic "cost" of the units of scientific production. The question of intellectual property rights of a scientific product created by social scientists and humanities scholars in the framework of an "effective contract" is raised; the position on this issue of various employer organizations in which these scientists work is analyzed. The interrelation of the parameters of "effective contracts" of workers with selected universities and scientific organizations and strategies to achieve higher positions in international rankings is traced. The most common incentives and barriers to academic activity are described. The interrelation of academic activity, scientific productivity, academic competence, academic mobility, publication strategies, models of participation in competitions for obtaining various types of grants, phenomena of academic reputation, academic rent, academic entrepreneurship are investigated. The phenomena of "pre-defense" and "post-defense" activity of scientists, as well as collective authorship of small-scale scientific works are investigated. A separate section of the presentation deals with the systems of expertise of scientific activity used in modern Russia, and the problems of legislative regulation of academic activity of scientists. The complex of solving the indicated problems by representatives of social science and humanities is evaluated from the point of the effectiveness of activities and norms of scientific ethics (academic honesty, objectivity, presumption of decency, etc.). The question of the risks of forming a market of imitation of scientific activity and ways to address this issue is raised.