2025, August 27
Share this articleThe number of scientific publications from Nazarbayev University (NU) continues to grow, with their global impact becoming increasingly evident.
As of August 23, 2025, NU scholars have published more than 10,640 articles, accounting for about one-sixth of all research output from Kazakhstani universities and research institutes, according to the NU Office of Research Policy and Analysis. Experts attribute this surge to the launch of new grant programs supporting research in the country. For comparison, in the first five years after NU’s founding, the total stood at just 1,600 publications.
A dramatic increase is also seen in Q1 journals (Scopus), where NU publications grew from 615 to 5,020 articles - about one-third of Kazakhstan’s total Q1 publications since 2011 (16,429 in total).
“Because payment of the publication fee in Q1 journals follows the independent scientific peer-review (on average, 1 in 10 articles pass the review), promoting publications in such journals for a fee is impossible,” the NU analytics team noted.
The quality of NU research is confirmed by the Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI). NU achieved an FWCI of 2.34, meaning NU researchers are cited over two times the global average. For comparison, Kazakhstan’s national FWCI is 1.17, or 17% above the global baseline. This progress reflects the growing quality of NU’s faculty, more than 30% of whom are Kazakhstani PhD holders, up from less than 10% in the university’s early years.
