Chapter 4: The Development of University Research in Kazakhstan During 1991–2013: A Bibliometric View

Since 1991, the government of Kazakhstan has taken many measures to transform the national research and innovation system. These efforts were aimed at reorienting the system from serving the needs of the centrally planned economy to the needs of the market economy, as well as helping the system recuperate from the losses induced by the economic decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was a simultaneous and at times implicit shift from post-Soviet to Western European and American sphere of influence.

While the government’s science and technology policy has been framed by strategic plans, it has not necessarily been supported by a comprehensive data-driven analysis of the existing situation. There is a deficit of empirical evidence-based studies on the state of research capacity in the country and there is a lack of government capacity to use such evidence in policy formulation. Meanwhile, it is important for research policy to be empirically grounded for policy makers to avoid blind copying of “best practices” from other countries, and, instead, to base their decisions on sound understanding of the state of the research system to be able to address the deficits and to capitalize on prior achievement. To promote the development of empirical research on the state of the national innovation system that could inform policy, as well as to raise local analytical capacity in the use of empirical evidence to guide policy making, the government has established the National Center for Science and Technology Information (NCSTI) in 2011. This center is responsible for science and technology policy evaluation with scientometric indicators, which are quantitative measures collected from citation and patent databases, which are used to characterize different parameters of a research system. The newly established NCSTI remains the only local producer of empirical research on the state of the research system in Kazakhstan and there is still a gap in empirically-based understanding of challenges and opportunities it faces, as well as strengths and weaknesses it possesses.