Response of local academia to the internationalization of research policies in a non-Anglophone country

Abstract

World University Rankings (WUR) are growing in prominence in the eyes of governments and universities around the world. Often this encourages the introduction of state- or institution-wide policies and regulations that put academics and graduate students under performative pressure to publish in international, peer-reviewed journals with a high impact factor (e.g., Scopus- or Web of Science-indexed journals). Such publication requirements are part of the broader internationalization of research (IoR) policies being implemented in many countries. This article adopts a faculty-based perspective and explores the response of academia to IoR policies in Kazakhstan, a developing country that actively pursues a strategy of integrating local academia into the global scientific community. The authors develop a typology of responses based on a literature review to guide the data collection and interpretation. Data for this study were collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Findings suggest that IoR policies lead to a variety of responses from academia, including gaming and token conformity.