There exist large disparities globally when it comes to knowledge production. Rich and powerful countries in the so-called Global North have developed strong capacity to undertake research and generate new knowledge. Research capacity is considerably more limited in the majority world where multiple factors of disadvantage are at play. Institutions producing research are weaker, funding available for research is scarce, and there are fewer instances of having a critical mass of intellectuals to make a field of research attractive to other researchers to join. These disparities in research capacity are exacerbated by the global science system and the dominance of English language. Therefore, a very small proportions of publications from the majority world penetrate the global science system (Chankseliani et al., 2021; Kasozi, 2017). The common knowledge described in this paragraph misses two crucial pieces of the puzzle.

First, the idea that higher education and research are shaped within territorially bounded, self-contained, and discrete spaces of nation-states (Clark, 1983; Enders, 2004; Huisman et al., 2007; Kosmützky, 2015) is problematic. The global science system is a relational system (Marginson, 2021) which cannot be understood by simple North-South divisions. There have been calls to study relations,  processes, and agencies beyond nation-states  (Marginson & Rhoades, 2002; Watson, 2009). The relational system rests on extensive collaborations and funding flows between countries. Approximately one third of publications from 2019 indexed in the WoS have involved an international collaboration (Chankseliani et al., 2021). While the literature on international collaborations is expanding, there is a scarcity of evidence on international research funding flows. An implicit assumption is that research is normally funded from national taxes as it used to happen during the Cold War. Hence, richer countries produce more, better quality and more impactful research output (Allik, 2013). A recent bibliometric study of research output from post-Soviet countries has challenged this assumption, showing that countries that prioritize research, have more researchers and more publications. Yet, this is where the links between the characteristics of the output and the research funding end. This study found that none of the three measures of the national spending on research (GERD as % of GDP, GERD per researcher, or GERD per capita) are linked with the quality or impact of the research output (Chankseliani et al., 2021). There do not exist readily available statistics on research which has been funded from sources outside the corresponding author’s country of affiliation in post-Soviet countries or globally.

Second, there are a number of countries which are not normally considered to be part of the Global South. Neither have they been recognised as the Global North. These countries include China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, among others. These countries have been actively engaged in glonacal development partnerships, especially within their regions (Shaw & Kabandula, 2020).  They have also been funding research nationally and internationally, contributing to the expansion of collaborative research networks.

This paper considers these two pieces of the puzzle and focuses on one region - the Caucasus and Central Asia. More specifically, this paper examines the funding for research in four countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) and three countries in the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia).

The study examines the following research questions: to what extent do international funding flows support the production of globally visible research? Which countries are the most prominent international funders of research? What are the contributions of different types of international funders - bilateral, multilateral, and philanthropic - to supporting globally visible research?

The study uses bibliometric analysis of the secondary numeric data from Elsevier/Scopus on the funding sources of published research. The data on the funders of published research was made available from Elsevier’s International Center for the Study of Research (ICSR) which is a cloud-based computational platform enabling to extract and transform the Scopus data. The funder information was extracted from the acknowledgements section as written in the final publication PDF. The dataset included the Scopus snapshot dated 1st January 2021. It encompassed all publication records (not preprints) from 1990-2019 inclusive. The ICSR lab filtered for publications that had a funding acknowledgement listed and captured by Elsevier’s algorithms which work best in English. The dataset included the count of publications by funding agency, funding agency’s country, publication author country of affiliation, and the year of publication.

A very small proportion of globally visible research (co-)authored by academics in these countries is funded from the respective national budgets. There are no acknowledgements of such sources in funded publications with authors from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Between 1% and 5% of funding acknowledgements from publications with authors based in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan mention local sources. Kazakhstan is a clear outlier with 29% of funding acknowledgements from publications with a Kazakhstan-based author indicating that research funding was received from a Kazakhstani source. Research funding from various international sources has made possible and shaped research productivity in the Caucasus and Central Asia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The funding for research has geographically diverse and ranged from North America to Russia, from Europe to Asia, from Australia to Latin America. While the regional funding flows from other post-Socialist countries have been notable, the majority of funding for globally visible research produced by authors from the Caucasus and Central Asia has originated from outside the broader region of former socialist countries. Throughout history, higher education and research in different parts of the world has been influenced by political, economic, cultural and social developments beyond their immediate territorial boundaries. The research funding from the philanthropic sector and from multilateral organisations has been overshadowed by the funding received from foreign government agencies. 68% of analysed acknowledgements indicate that the funding was received from a foreign government agency. The acknowledgements of philanthropies/charities (7%) and multilateral organisations (5%) are significantly less frequent in the publications analysed. The production of globally visible knowledge in the Caucasus and Central Asia has not been an endogenous process contained within the territorial boundaries of nation-states. In the context of research being extremely poorly funded nationally, international flows of funding and knowledge have sustained research in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

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