No Clarivate-authored source links the 2023 methodology tightening to the Saudi-affiliated HCR count drop — the causal claim is SIRIS Academic's own inference

A 2026-07-30 re-verification, run to close question-does-clarivates-2023-methodology-change-explain-the-saudi-hcr-drop, searched directly for any Clarivate-authored statement connecting its 2023 Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) evaluation-policy tightening (claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology) to the same year's Saudi-affiliated HCR count falling from 109 to 76 (claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status). None surfaced.

SIRIS Academic's own PDF report states the link in SIRIS's own voice: the methodology changes "have also presumably been impacted by the mediatisation and institutional investigations of the cases of falsely affiliated Saudi Arabian HCRs" — its own hedge ("presumably"), applied to its own inference. The same report catalogs Clarivate's 25 April 2023 statement on HCR affiliations as one line in a bullet list of reactions to the scandal, issued "to position their role in the context of those revelations" — not as an explanation of the drop.

Two Clarivate-authored documents were checked directly this session — the April statement and David Pendlebury's blog post "Highly Cited Researchers 2023: Evolving Evaluation Policy" (source of the Tier-1 quote in claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology) — and neither names Saudi Arabia or ties the screening change to any country. [unverified-quote — needs direct read]: this absence-finding was obtained via WebFetch, not archive_page (which returned a permissions error on every attempt this session), so it is well-corroborated across two independent sessions (2026-07-29, 2026-07-30) but not yet receipted by a direct fetch.

Contemporary journalism (the same Science/AAAS 2023 article already flagged in claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status) describes only a general Clarivate comment, not a Saudi-specific one — but the article itself remains unread behind a persistent 403 block, so this leg adds no independent confirmation, only a consistent pattern.