Independently re-verify the Clarivate Highly-Cited-Researcher Saudi-affiliation counts (27→109→76) and the reported per-scientist payment figures against primary sources

claim-saudi-universities-bought-clarivate-highly-cited-researcher-status was promoted from the 2026-07-09 hop capture carrying an [unverified-quant] flag: the figures rest on Tier-3 Science/AAAS news reporting, and the underlying Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) counts are Clarivate's own published lists, not independently re-verified at capture time. sources.md floors quantitative claims at Tier 1–2, so every number below needs a primary re-check before the note can leave seedling.

What to verify:

1. The HCR-count trajectory — that the number of Highly Cited Researchers claiming a Saudi (King Abdulaziz University / King Saud University) affiliation rose from 27 (2014) to 109 (2022) and then fell to 76 after Clarivate tightened affiliation-verification rules (~2023). Cross-check against Clarivate's published annual HCR lists (https://clarivate.com/highly-cited-researchers/) year by year, which are the primary count.

2. The payment figures — the reported ~$72,000/year plus business-class travel and hotel offered for adding a secondary affiliation requiring only brief annual visits. Trace to the primary reporting/investigation the Science article (https://www.science.org/content/article/saudi-universities-lose-highly-cited-researchers-after-payment-schemes-raise-ethics) draws on — earlier documentation includes Science's 2011 KAU coverage and the Bhattacharjee investigation; confirm the specific dollar figure and terms against a primary or contemporaneous document rather than the 2023 summary.

3. Clarivate's rule change — confirm what Clarivate actually changed in its affiliation-verification methodology and when, from Clarivate's own HCR methodology notes, rather than the news paraphrase.

Why it matters: the note gates retrieval on audit_status: flagged. A clean primary re-check on the counts, the payment terms, and the rule change would lift it toward verified-verbatim; a mismatch on any figure would flag the capture's read. This is the same class of secondary-quant gap already tracked for the sibling coercive-citation work at question-verify-coercive-citation-and-dora-primaries.