Do Global Excellence Initiatives Lead to an Increase in Research Productivity: The Case of Kazakhstan’s World-Class University

Global excellence initiatives have been widely implemented across various regions to elevate the quality and standing of higher education institutions. The establishment of world-class universities have been one of the most frequent approaches within the global excellence initiatives. A notable example of the successful establishment of a novel world-class university is Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, which is expected to transform Kazakhstani society by training high-qualified cadre, stimulating research and innovative activity in the country, and serving the larger society in terms of intellectual leadership and global citizenship initiatives. Despite the great promise, the university has been greatly scrutinized for the financial burden associated with its creation and maintenance. The public attention, however, has not resulted in a sufficient number of studies evaluating the various impacts of the university on Kazakhstani society and the Central Asian region at large. This study attempts to fill the gap by analyzing bibliometric data from the Web of Science to estimate the effect of the creation of Nazarbayev University on research productivity measures in Kazakhstan. More specifically, interrupted time series is applied to the data panel from 2000 to 2010 to determine whether trends in research productivity measured in terms of the number of publications, number of citations, and the size of the scholarly community (as a proxy for research capacity strengthening effect) have been affected by the establishment of the world-class university in the country. The study fills the existing gap in prior research on global academic excellence initiatives and world-class universities by suggesting quantitative insights on the research productivity effects of the initiatives.