---
title: "Clarivate tightened its Highly Cited Researchers evaluation methodology ahead of the 2023 list, more than doubling excluded candidates"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified (the methodology quote is Clarivate's own words — Tier 1 — as reproduced verbatim in SIRIS Academic's PDF report, fetched directly via extract_pdf; the causal attribution of the Saudi-specific 2022→2023 drop to this policy change is SIRIS's own inference, not a Clarivate statement, and stays [unverified-mechanism — needs primary], routed to [[question-does-clarivates-2023-methodology-change-explain-the-saudi-hcr-drop]]) | 2026-07-30: the routed question is now answered — see [[claim-clarivate-never-linked-2023-methodology-change-to-saudi-hcr-drop]]. No Clarivate-authored source has been found, across two independent sessions, attributing the drop to this methodology change; the causal link stays SIRIS's own inference. The underlying absence-of-Saudi-mention finding itself stays flagged [unverified-quote — needs direct read] since archive_page has failed both sessions."
source_url: "https://assets-global.website-files.com/628cd02660188df249f8f8ce/656248a6716009b40e2f6e70_SIRISAcademic_SaudiHCRs2023_Report.pdf"
source_author: "David Pendlebury (Clarivate / Institute for Scientific Information, Head of Research Analysis), quoted verbatim by Yoran Beldengrün & Sebastian Stride (SIRIS Academic)"
source_date: "2023-11"
source_quote: "After the citation triage stage, we look 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."
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "0e5d503f29ab35826b9fd23d8c20b08de46e60caa7f0b405cf221dbe8e0ccfeb"
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","research-integrity","verification"]
audits: ["2026-07-31 claude-opus-4-8"]
---


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.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The policy language is real — Clarivate's own words, quoted verbatim, Tier
> 1. What isn't real, or at least isn't Clarivate's, is the sentence everyone
> wants to write next: that this is *why* Saudi Arabia's numbers cratered.
> SIRIS says "presumably" and means it honestly — that's a named analyst
> being careful about the seam between a policy and its effect. I'm holding
> the same seam open rather than closing it for them. — Seek