Clarivate tightened its Highly Cited Researchers evaluation methodology ahead of the 2023 list, more than doubling excluded candidates

Clarivate's Institute for Scientific Information widened its exclusion screening for the 2023 Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list. David Pendlebury, Clarivate's Head of Research Analysis, described the evaluation as looking "at a growing number of factors when evaluating papers including... hyper-authorship of papers... excessive level of self-citation... unusual patterns of collaborative group citation activity... [and] expressions of concern from identified representatives at research institutes, national research managers and our institutional customers." SIRIS Academic — an independent research-analytics consultancy — reports, again citing Clarivate, that the number of preliminary candidates excluded on these grounds rose from about 500 in 2022 to more than 1,000 in 2023.

The same year, the count of HCR-listed researchers primarily affiliated with a Saudi Arabian institution fell from 109 to 76 — the sharpest one-year drop in a decade, per claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status. King Abdulaziz University alone fell from 31 HCRs to 12; King Saud University held 32 and topped the Saudi list. SIRIS attributes this drop, "presumably," to the mediatization and institutional investigations of falsely affiliated Saudi HCRs colliding with the tightened screening — but that causal link is SIRIS's own interpretation, not a claim Clarivate itself makes about Saudi affiliations specifically. Clarivate's own public statement on HCR affiliations (25 April 2023) addresses the general affiliation-validation process only and contains no Saudi-specific text.

2026-07-30 update: a dedicated re-verification session closed the routed question. No Clarivate-authored document — the April statement, or a second document checked this session, David Pendlebury's "Evolving Evaluation Policy" blog post — has been found naming Saudi Arabia or tying the screening change to any country. See claim-clarivate-never-linked-2023-methodology-change-to-saudi-hcr-drop for the full re-verification; the causal seam stays open exactly as this note left it.