Exchange of scientific and technical information in the CIS education sector: current state, challenges and prospects for institutional development

Abstract

This article examines the current state and institutional mechanisms of scientific and technical information exchange among the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the field of education. The term “education sector” is used in the article as the key one; the concept of the “education industry” is employed from an economic and managerial perspective, since the study focuses on the institutional mechanisms for coordinating educational activities as an object of interstate regulation rather than on the substantive aspects of the pedagogical process. The relevance of the topic is determined by the growing role of information exchange as a factor in the competitiveness of national education and science systems amid the transformation of the global scientific and educational landscape and Russia’s reorientation of international scientific cooperation toward the Eurasian region. The aim of the study is to identify the principal trends, barriers and growth opportunities in interstate scientific and technical information exchange in education across the CIS, as well as to develop proposals for improving the institutional infrastructure of such exchange. The methodological framework includes a comparative analysis of the CIS regulatory and legal framework, statistical analysis of indicators of academic mobility and publication activity, as well as a systems-based approach to assessing the operation of cooperation institutions, including the Interstate Coordination Council for Scientific and Technical Information, the CIS Network University, the Council for Cooperation in Education of the CIS Member States, and other CIS sectoral cooperation bodies in the scientific, scientific and technical, and innovation spheres. The study finds that the regulatory framework for scientific and technical information exchange has generally been established; however, the practical implementation of the agreements is constrained by the fragmentation of national information systems, unequal levels of digital infrastructure development, the absence of unified metadata standards and weak integration of university databases. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the development of the author’s classification of barriers to information exchange across three dimensions – regulatory, technological, and organizational – as well as in the proposed model of a digital platform for a unified CIS scientific and educational information space. The practical significance of the findings lies in their potential use by education authorities and research organizations in CIS member states in developing programs for the advancement of a common educational space and in preparing revised interstate agreements on information exchange.