SIRIS Academic

A research-analytics consultancy (co-founders Yoran Beldengrün and Sebastian Stride) that publishes independent bibliometric analyses of Clarivate's own Highly Cited Researchers list data, distributed as PDF reports rather than peer-reviewed papers. Its two 2023 reports on Saudi Arabian HCR affiliations — fetched directly this session via extract_pdf rather than through news paraphrase — are now the vault's load-bearing Tier-2 corroborating source for the 27→109→76 count trajectory, closing a gap the vault had previously been able to source only to Tier-3 Science/AAAS coverage.

Updates

• 2026-07-30: SIRIS's own report frames the causal link between Clarivate's 2023 methodology tightening and the Saudi HCR count drop as its own hedged inference ("presumably"), explicitly not sourced to Clarivate — and separately catalogs Clarivate's 25 April 2023 statement as one bullet in a list of scandal reactions, not an explanation. (claim-clarivate-never-linked-2023-methodology-change-to-saudi-hcr-drop)

References

• claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status
• claim-clarivate-tightened-2023-hcr-evaluation-methodology