The contemporary internationalisation of higher education (HE) has led to deep and lasting transformations in universities’ societal roles, organisational structures, and daily practices (Musiał, 2023). Internationalisation is now widely treated as an unquestioned imperative, what Musiał (2023, p.21) calls a ‘‘rationalized myth,’’ and it has reshaped the global academic landscape by expanding measurable mechanisms for evaluating and governing institutions. These mechanisms include global university rankings, international research databases and metrics (e.g., Scopus; Web of Science), and national accountability and quality assurance systems that tie funding, reputation, and status to quantified research performance (Pardo-Guerra, 2022). Although internationalisation is framed as inherently beneficial, it is frequently discussed without sufficient historical or political contextualisation. As a result, global power asymmetries, colonial legacies, and economic disparities can be obscured (Buckner & Stein, 2020). This uncritical framing risks reinforcing existing global hierarchies, reproducing Western dominance, and marginalising scholarship from the peripheries (Bamberger & Morris, 2024).

These dynamics are particularly salient in post-socialist countries. Historically, many post-socialist universities prioritised teaching and vocational training, while research was concentrated in academies or specialised (sectoral) institutes outside higher education institutes (HEIs) (Smolentseva et al., 2018). The post-Soviet transition has intensified such tensions as universities are increasingly expected to adopt research missions and global academic standards that diverge from their original design (Chankseliani et al., 2022). The expansion of rankings and competitive performance regimes has further pressured HEIs to prioritise research visibility and align with indicators modelled on elite, research-driven universities (Locke, 2021). Yet universities in many post-socialist settings face persistent structural constraints (such as inadequate funding, restricted academic freedom, limited access to scholarly databases, and heavy teaching loads) that complicate a shift toward research-oriented missions (Chankseliani et al., 2022).

More broadly, rankings and performance metrics have entrenched audit culture and accelerated a shift in governance towards calculative logics that prioritise efficiency, visibility, and accountability (Shore & Wright, 2015). This shift has reconfigured academic labour, compelling faculty, particularly in resource-constrained settings, to privilege research outputs aligned with citation-based evaluation systems that disproportionately favour Western academic institutions and journals (Collyer, 2018). Pressures to publish in English, secure grants, and produce measurable outputs have intensified in the pursuit of academic prestige and international recognition; however, these demands often expose academics to hierarchical subjectivities and unequal competition shaped by linguistic barriers, resource disparities, and exclusion from influential academic networks (Welsh, 2020). While the implications of neoliberal competition and North–South inequalities are well documented, less is known about how these dynamics unfold in Central Asia, where Soviet legacies and ongoing Russian influence continue to shape academic and institutional cultures.

Uzbekistan provides an informative case. National research policies remain decisive in structuring the academic landscape, as HEIs operate under strong central government oversight. Since independence in 1991, the sector has experienced infrastructural decline and a loss of human capital due to prolonged underinvestment (Ruziev & Mamasolieva, 2022). More recently, the government has sought to revitalise research capacity and institutional infrastructure, guided by the belief that economic development depends on global competitiveness. In this context, the study examines policy initiatives introduced since 2017, a pivotal moment in the liberalisation of HE, intended to increase research productivity, promote innovation, and strengthen academic engagement, albeit largely driven by centralised directives. However, despite growing expectations for research engagement, the majority of academic staff still lack doctoral qualifications. This divide between policy ambition and academic realities risks undermining both research quality and institutional credibility. 

The paper investigates how internationalisation in Uzbekistan, operationalised through performance metrics, ranking ambitions, and the imperative to publish in international outlets, reshapes academic knowledge production and institutional orientations. Rather than focusing on macro-level policy design, the analysis centres on how these instruments reconfigure academic work practices, faculty subjectivities, and institutional logics within state HEIs. Conceptually, the paper treats quantification in HE as a social, political, and epistemic process that has become inseparable from internationalisation. It draws on the sociology of quantification (Espeland & Stevens, 2008; Mespoulet, 2022), the audit/accountability and performativity scholarship (Ball, 2003; Shore & Wright 2015; Strathern, 2000), and theories of reactivity and discipline (Espeland & Sauder, 2007; Sauder & Espeland, 2009) to situate measurement within broader transformations of governance and epistemic power. Empirically, it examines how global measurement regimes (e.g., rankings and bibliometric metrics) intersect with legacies of Soviet-era quantification to produce a hybrid mode of ‘‘governance by numbers’’ (Rose, 1991). While such governance is promoted as enhancing transparency, accountability, visibility, and competitiveness, it also reshapes the moral and epistemic foundations of academic work. This lens illuminates how global norms are negotiated, contested, and localised within Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet, peripheral academic context. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative, exploratory design rooted in interpretivist and critical paradigms. It sees reality as socially constructed and contextually embedded, while also attending to structural power relations and post-Soviet epistemic legacies through a critical lens (Kincheloe et al., 2011). The approach side helps to analyse how participants interpret policy-driven changes and how institutional arrangements (shaped by neoliberal pressures and lingering Soviet systems) condition academic practice. Data were generated primarily through semi-structured interviews, which supported both thematic consistency and flexibility for follow-up probing (Adams, 2015). The study includes 36 academic and managerial staff from four state universities in Tashkent and Samarkand. Purposive sampling was used to capture diversity across roles, disciplines (primarily Social Sciences and Humanities), gender, and academic rank, and snowball sampling complemented this strategy to reach participants less accessible through formal channels. Interviews were conducted mostly in Uzbek, with occasional switches to English or Russian to improve clarity and participant comfort. Transcripts were analysed iteratively using an interpretive, pattern-oriented strategy focused on themes rather than strict coding rules (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2018). Interview accounts were triangulated with policy texts and internal university documents (such as university records and incentive schemes), which added institutional context and strengthened the credibility of interpretations (Bowen, 2009).

The study shows that the rapid adoption of global rankings and publication metrics in Uzbekistan has produced a distinctive form of ‘‘publish in Scopus or perish’’ culture in which research is redefined as metric production rather than knowledge creation. Academics are rewarded and monitored through strict KPI systems, incentive schemes and internal rankings, turning Scopus indexation, h-indices and quartiles into primary currencies of academic value and instruments of surveillance. This produces ‘‘Scopus anxiety,’’ strategic gaming (paid and predatory publishing, gifting authorship, salami-slicing), and a shift from pedagogical to quantified identities, while leaving structural constraints such as heavy teaching loads and weak methodological infrastructure largely unaddressed. At the same time, faculty are not passive. They comply, resist, or adapt, developing hybrid strategies such as dual publishing (local and international), selective collaboration, and pragmatic engagement with English as both an opportunity and a burden. Conceptually, the study frames these dynamics as a form of epistemic colonisation, where academic legitimacy is outsourced to Western metrics, yet also as a site of contested agency and modernising differently through the continued importance of Soviet-era structures and local knowledge practices. For European HE, the case of Uzbekistan functions as a distorted mirror of familiar debates on audit culture, rankings and Englishisation, revealing the unintended consequences when Western measures travel to post-socialist peripheries (e.g., East and Central European contexts) as default policy. It calls on European institutions to reflect on their role and to support more plural, context-sensitive systems of academic value that do not marginalise peripheral languages or epistemologies.

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