The Scientific Youth School “Metallogeny of ancient and modern oceans” has been held annually since 1995 by the Institute of Mineralogy of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMinUrO RAS) and South Ural State University (SUSU, branch in Miass). Since 2019, the school has been hosted by the South Ural Federal Scientific Center for Mineralogy and Geoecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (South Ural Federal Scientific Center MiG Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences). After the founder of the school, Professor Viktor Vladimirovich Zaikov, passed away at the end of 2017, the Organizing Committee decided to name the school after him in 2018.

The purpose of the School is to introduce students and graduate students to the modern principles of metallogenic analysis of structures of oceanic origin of different ages, the achievements of marine and continental geology and exploration. The school is designed to coordinate and improve the efficiency of multi-level training of scientific specialists in the field of minerals from various universities and scientific organizations of the geological profile of Russia and foreign countries. The main social task of the School is to form creative connections between established and future young professionals and to attract talented youth to science.

Over the years of the School, more than 1160 students from many Russian state universities participated in it: Adygea, Altai, Buryat, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Moscow, Moscow Exploration, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Perm, Petrozavodsk, Russian Friendship of Peoples, Siberian, St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg mining, Saratov, Syktyvkar, Tomsk, Tomsk technical, Tuva, Tyumen technical, Ural mining, Southern, South Russian technical, South Ural, Chelyabinsk. The School was also attended by students from the national universities of Ukraine (Donetsk, Kyiv, Krivoy Rog, Lvov, Kharkov), Belarus (Belarusian) and Kazakhstan (Rudny industrial).

In different years, outstanding specialists in the field of geology, metallogeny and mineralogy participated in the School: Academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.P. Lisitsyn and V.A. Koroteev, Corresponding Member of the RAS V.N. Anfilogov, V.N. Puchkov, E.V. Sklyarov, academicians of RANE.K. Markhinin and Yu.A. Bogdanov. Among foreign scientists, Professors S. Scott (Canada, University of Toronto), A. Malakhov (USA, University of Honolulu), R. Kitagawa (Japan, University of Hiroshima), F. Barriga (Portugal, University of Lisbon), P Herzig (Germany, Freiberg Mining Academy), P. Nimis (University of Padua, Italy), J.-J. Orgeval (Bureau of Geological Research, Orleans, France).

The Proceedings of the School are published annually under the general title Metallogeny of the Ancient and Modern Oceans (ongoing peer-reviewed edition). Each issue contains articles by professors, students and graduate students on a variety of topics: from global problems of tectonics, magma and ore formation to fine mineralogical studies using modern methods and equipment.

A feature of the School since 2002 is the live broadcast of meetings on the Internet, which allows participants in absentia to speak online, receive answers to questions and participate in discussions. The program of the School includes a field trip to the deposits of paleoocean structures in the Southern Urals. The constant object of the excursion is the Natural Science Museum of the Ilmensky State Reserve, which presents an extensive collection of minerals from ore deposits of the world. According to the decision of the School-2015, the meetings were given the opportunity for extended speeches on the topics of works for the competition of the scientific degrees of candidate and doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences with the corresponding regulations for reports.