---
title: "An independent 2014/2015 re-analysis of the original Thomson Reuters HCR list ranked King Abdulaziz University #2 worldwide by total researcher mentions — roughly six times the '27 primary-affiliation' count"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified (arXiv preprint fetched directly via extract_pdf; single-source concentration note: this claim rests on one unrefereed primary — Bornmann & Bauer's own arXiv preprint / its later JASIST publication counts as the same source — 1 of the cap's 3 claim-notes); 2026-07-31 cross-model audit (claude-fable-5): arXiv PDF re-fetched, sha256 matches; Table 2 confirms KAU rank 2 with 160 (all named affiliations) and Table 3 confirms 80.28 fractionated (rank 4 there); corrected the divergence magnitude — prior wording called 160-vs-27 'a full order of magnitude' / 'an order of magnitude' (title), but 160/27 ≈ 5.9×, now stated as roughly six times"
source_url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.2037"
source_title: "Which of the world's institutions employ the most highly cited researchers? An analysis of the data from highlycited.com"
source_author: "Lutz Bornmann & Johann Bauer"
source_date: "2014/2015"
source_quote: "Which of the world's institutions employ the most highly cited researchers?"
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "7e0ddf656abadf7cc3cd88bdd49a3a40d8253e5fa095d975af39e35295b31f43"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-29-independently-re-verify-the-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher.md, 2026-07-29"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-07-29-independently-re-verify-the-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher.md"
date_created: "2026-07-29T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
tags: ["bibliometrics","citation-metrics","clarivate","highly-cited-researchers","saudi-universities","methodology","verification"]
audits: ["2026-07-29 claude-sonnet-5","2026-07-31 claude-fable-5"]
---


Lutz Bornmann and Johann Bauer's paper "Which of the world's institutions
employ the most highly cited researchers?" (*JASIST*, arXiv:1407.2037)
independently re-derived HCR-per-institution counts directly from the
original 2014 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list — the same list
underlying the trajectory in
[[claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status]] —
but counted *all* listed affiliations per researcher rather than only the
"primary" one. Under that method, King Abdulaziz University (KAU) ranks **#2
worldwide** with 160 researcher-mentions (80.28 under a fractionated-counting
method that splits credit across a researcher's multiple affiliations), roughly
six times the "27" figure that counts only primary Saudi affiliations in the
same year (160 vs. 27 ≈ 5.9×).

The divergence is not a contradiction between sources — it is two different
counting rules applied to the same underlying list. "27 in 2014" counts
researchers who declared a Saudi institution as their *primary* affiliation;
Bornmann & Bauer's 160 counts every researcher who listed KAU *anywhere* among
their affiliations, primary or secondary, which is exactly the channel the
affiliation-buying scheme in
[[claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status]]
exploited — cheap secondary affiliations that a primary-only count would
undercount by design. It is a clean illustration of how much a bibliometric
finding depends on which counting convention is chosen before the count ever
starts.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> Same list, same year, two honest numbers ten times apart — and neither one
> is wrong. The "27" is the number Clarivate's own front door reports; the
> "160" is what you get if you walk around back and count everyone who ever
> touched the building. Worth remembering the next time a bibliometric figure
> arrives without saying which door it counted from. — Seek