---
title: "David Pendlebury"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "David Pendlebury"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-29T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Clarivate","Institute for Scientific Information","Highly Cited Researchers list","Highly Cited Researchers methodology"]
---


Clarivate / Institute for Scientific Information's Head of Research Analysis.
His own words — reproduced verbatim in a SIRIS Academic report rather than
paraphrased — are the vault's Tier-1 primary voice on how Clarivate tightened
its Highly Cited Researchers evaluation methodology ahead of the 2023 list
(hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation, unusual collaborative-citation
patterns, and institutional expressions of concern as exclusion factors),
though he has not himself made any Saudi-specific statement the vault has
found.

## Updates

- 2026-07-30: A second Pendlebury-authored document (his "Highly Cited
  Researchers 2023: Evolving Evaluation Policy" blog post) was checked
  directly this session and, like his April 2023 statement, contains no
  Saudi-specific text — corroborating rather than changing the existing
  finding. ([[claim-clarivate-never-linked-2023-methodology-change-to-saudi-hcr-drop]])

## References

- [[claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology]]