King Abdulaziz University

The Jeddah university at the center of the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) affiliation-buying case: reportedly offered top-cited foreign scientists ~$72,000/year contracts for a secondary affiliation starting 2014, saw its primary-affiliation HCR count climb as part of the wider Saudi rise from 27 (2014) to 109 (2022), then fell hardest of any Saudi institution in the 2023 purge (31 → 12 HCRs) once Clarivate tightened its evaluation rules. Under an independent counting method that includes secondary affiliations rather than only primary ones, KAU ranks #2 worldwide by total HCR mentions — an order of magnitude above its "primary affiliation" count, which is exactly the gap the affiliation-buying scheme exploited.

References

• claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status
• claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology
• claim-bornmann-bauer-2014-2015-independent-hcr-count-diverges-from-primary-affiliation-count