The main indicator of the achievement of the first stage in the academic career is the award of the
PhD, which comes only from the evaluation of the research level of the applicant. Our research
allowed us to create a psychological model of the subject of scientific research activity and highlight
the specific psychological characteristics that form the personality of the beginning scientist.
Previously, the requirements and assumptions of the individual were described, and this made it
possible to consider a person as a subject of scientific research activity. However the psychological
determinants were never defined. The nature of the requirements was related to the general mental
processes, the possibilities and qualities of the individual, the internal specific conditionality of
which was not disclosed. The work of by Е.А. Klimov on professionally oriented periodization
allowed us to distinguish two phases of the development of research activities: «the phase of
internality – the acquisition of professional experience» – training in graduate school and «the phase
of skill – the qualified performance of work» – the requirements of standards and the defense of the
candidate's thesis. The search for psychological determinants as an «internal condition» determining
the transition from phase to phase was based on the theoretical and methodological approaches of
Russian psychologists E.A. Klimov, N.M. Peysakhov, Y.A. Ponomarev, and S.L. Rubinstein. This
made it possible to determine the block of psycho-diagnostic tools, a set of valid and reliable author's
questionnaires, statistical data processing methods of high level of reliability.