Ukrainian universities in QS World University Rankings: when the means become ends

This study, taking Ukrainian universities as an example, aims, first, to contribute to the body of knowledge on the effects of QS Rankings and national policies inspired by it on universities’ research assessment policies and their research output in Scopus. Second, to explore the relationship between different publication and authorship patterns and the citation impact. Dataset includes publications of six Ukrainian universities assessed by QS Rankings 2025. The study findings highlight that QS Rankings has turned the means of universities into their ends. University performance is supposed to result in the quality of life, technological progress, economic and social well-being of the nation. Publications are just one of the means of achieving these ends. At the national level, the state sustains means-ends decoupling overloading universities with multiple demands without providing beneficial conditions. Universities’ managers also sustain means-ends decoupling, the degree of which varies among universities. Explored universities published extensively in Ukrainian Scopus-indexed, discontinued from Scopus and MDPI journals to increase output in Scopus rapidly. Conference papers constitute a large share of publications. They have a high impact only if the citations are normalised by document type but QS Rankings doesn’t do this. Thus, their impact is small. The citation impact of the articles falls from Q1 to Q4 quartile, while the share of articles authored by only national authors increases. Ukrainian case shows that means-ends decoupling at global, national and organisational levels results in diversion of critical resources, both financial and human.