In the effort to raise university faculty research capacity and to stimulate faculty to produce research of greater quality, the government of Kazakhstan has recently introduced a requirement for publication in journals with an impact factor as a part of requirements for faculty promotion. This study will explore to what extent impact factor publication requirement was incorporated into universities’ promotion policies and on the resulting experiences of faculty. The study is based on the results of an online survey of faculty, who vary on a number of characteristics: 1) seniority, 2) type of formal post-graduate education (Soviet, post-Soviet local, Western), 3) discipline, 4) type of institution (national, regional, private). The study explores barriers that faculty experience in publishing in impact-factor publications, the strategies they use, as well as their views on the role and effectiveness of impact-factor publication requirement in research capacity building and research productivity evaluation. In addition to that, the paper analyzes the alignment of incentives for publishing in impact-factor journals and university or national level support structures that faculty view as effective in building research capacity and in achieving an increase in the number of high quality publications.