Renata Kudaibergenova

Type of the article: Research Article

The study analyzes how academic excellence is conceptualized within Kazakhstani universities, focusing on two key internal stakeholder groups: faculty members and administrative staff. While academic excellence has become a global priority, little empirical evidence exists on how it is interpreted in emerging higher education systems. The paper addresses this gap by examining the Kazakhstani case, where government-led excellence initiatives are still in their early stages. A quota-based survey was conducted across 42 universities, producing weighted responses from 832 faculty and 155 administrators. Quantitative data were processed with IBM SPSS Statistics 25, employing descriptive statistics, Welch’s t-test, and two-way ANOVA to compare perceptions between the groups. Despite a broad consensus on the multidimensional nature of academic excellence (positive agreement averaged > 94%), the results reveal consistent differences in their interpretation of core parameters. Of the 32 indicators tested, only four showed no statistically significant difference between faculty and administrators: faculty numbers (p = 0.246), academic reputation and stakeholder recognition (p = 0.701), graduate employability and employer satisfaction (p = 0.106), and student enrollment (p = 0.588). Overall, administrators assigned systematically higher importance to institutional characteristics, enabling components, and barriers across all thematic blocks. Consistent with the conceptual framework integrating institutional and stakeholder perspectives, these patterns indicate that external policy pressures and role-specific responsibilities shape interpretations of excellence. These findings provide a data-driven basis for designing initiatives that couple system-level reforms with participatory governance and co-created metrics, thereby improving the translation of policy into practice.

Acknowledgment
This research was funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. BR21882373).

Type of the article: Research Article

This study is relevant given the growing reliance of post-Soviet higher education systems on bibliometric indicators to evaluate academic performance and allocate research funding. The purpose of the study is to examine whether generational cohorts of productive scientists in Kazakhstan differ in their publication patterns under the transition to bibliometric-based research evaluation. The study is based on a bibliometric analysis of 220 highly productive authors across 22 subject areas using Scopus and SciVal data for 2018–2023, with correlation analysis applied across three age cohorts (under 40, 41-55, and 56+). The results reveal significant generational differences in publication strategies. Among researchers under 40, a very strong correlation is observed between total publications and Q1 journal output (r = 0.95), and between publication activity and international collaboration (r = 0.98). This cohort also demonstrates higher publication activity in internationally co-authored papers and stronger alignment with formal bibliometric indicators. In contrast, the 41-55 cohort shows the weakest relationship between publication output and Q1 publications (r = 0.40), lower levels of leading authorship, and less pronounced integration into international publication networks. Researchers aged 56+ occupy an intermediate position but demonstrate the highest share of publications in journals later excluded from Scopus, indicating greater exposure to potentially problematic publication practices during earlier stages of Kazakhstan’s research system transformation. The findings suggest that highly productive scientists from different generational cohorts respond differently to formal bibliometric evaluation requirements. The presence of publications in journals later excluded from Scopus across all cohorts suggests that bibliometric-based evaluation systems may encourage strategic responses to performance criteria.

Acknowledgment
This research was funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. BR21882373).