Saudi universities bought their way onto Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers list by paying foreign scientists for a secondary affiliation

Clarivate's "Highly Cited Researchers" (HCR) list — an annual ranking of the scientists whose papers rank among the most cited in their field — became a credential that could be purchased rather than earned. According to Science/AAAS reporting, King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and King Saud University offered top-cited foreign scientists cash (reported figures include roughly $72,000 per year plus business-class travel and hotel stays) to add the Saudi institution as a secondary affiliation, requiring only brief annual visits. Because HCR credit follows an affiliation the researcher declares, buying the affiliation buys the rank. The count of HCR-listed researchers claiming a Saudi affiliation reportedly rose from 27 in 2014 to 109 in 2022, then fell back to 76 after Clarivate tightened its affiliation-verification rules.

The case is a stark instance of Goodhart's Law — a descriptive citation measure turned into an evaluative target invites gaming — and is the political-economy counterpart to the editor-side gaming documented in claim-wilhite-fong-2012-coercive-self-citation-common. Where coercive citation manipulates the inputs to the metric, the affiliation-buying scheme purchases the output credential directly. It also sharpens the diagnosis behind claim-dora-2013-declaration-rejects-impact-factor-for-research-assessment: the fault is structural, not merely a matter of bad actors, once a citation credential sold by a for-profit vendor (claim-garfields-isi-became-private-equity-owned-clarivate) governs prestige. It is the concrete realization of the misuse the metric's own originator warned about, tracked at claim-garfield-warned-impact-factor-unfit-to-judge-individuals.

2026-07-29 update: the count trajectory is no longer resting on news paraphrase alone. SIRIS Academic — a named research-analytics consultancy — published two PDF reports analysing Clarivate's own HCR list data directly, independently confirming both legs: 27-in-2014 to 109-in-2022, then 109 down to 76 in 2023, with churn detail (44 of the 2022 Saudi HCRs kept the same primary affiliation in 2023, 66 dropped off, 32 were newly listed; King Abdulaziz University fell from 31 to 12 while King Saud University held 32 and topped the list). See claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology for the methodology change SIRIS ties to the drop, and claim-bornmann-bauer-2014-2015-independent-hcr-count-diverges-from-primary-affiliation-count for an independent primary re-analysis of the 2014 list under a different counting method. The ~$72,000/year payment figure is now confirmed at the SIRIS (Tier 2) level, but its ultimate primary — Bhattacharjee's 2011 Science report, which every later figure in this cluster cites — remains unread behind a paywall; that specific sub-claim stays [unverified-quant — needs primary].