The list of the world’s most-cited scientists excludes 1,000 researchers over fraudulent practices

The prestigious list of Highly Cited Researchers, compiled by the multinational firm Clarivate, has excluded more than 1,000 scientists due to allegations of fraud. The criteria to be included has now been tightened, after a scandal involving Saudi university rankings was uncovered by EL PAÍS earlier this year.

This list typically includes close to 7,000 researchers whose studies are the most often mentioned by other colleagues, which is a supposed indicator of excellence. Influential international university rankings, such as the Shanghai Ranking, take into account the number of highly-cited academics to either elevate or demote an institution. These scientists should be the best in the world, but in recent years, the list has enabled all kinds of mediocre researchers to grab a slot by doing all kinds of tricks.

Saudi Arabia’s dictatorship – determined to clean up its image – has set the goal of placing at least five of its universities among the top 200 in the international rankings by 2030. Some Saudi institutions have taken a shady shortcut: paying up to $75,000 annually to highly-cited foreign scientists, to lie in the Clarivate database and declare that their primary workplace is a Saudi Arabian university. Last year, 11 highly-cited Spanish scientists falsely claimed that their primary affiliation was in the Saudi kingdom. After the controversy, none of them are on the list anymore. The largest scientific body in Spain, the National Research Council (CSIC), has just opened disciplinary proceedings against its five researchers allegedly involved.

Saudi universities will plummet in the next international rankings, according to a new analysis by the Barcelona-based consulting firm SIRIS Academic, which advises academic entities around the world. Saudi institutions boasted 109 highly-cited researchers last year, but now have only 76, a 30% decrease. King Abdulaziz University, based in Jeddah, is the most affected. It claimed to have 31 highly-cited scientists in 2022. This year, it only has 12. As a result of this, the institution will fall by more than 50 spots in the Shanghai ranking, from its current position of 166, according to calculations made by Swiss specialist Yoran Beldengrün, the main author of SIRIS Academic’s report. This past April, the consultancy already revealed that Saudi Arabia had five times as many highly-cited scientists as Germany, a country with more than double the population.

“In Saudi universities, there’s been a brutal drop in the number of highly-cited scientists. It’s not a natural fall, but rather, one caused by the impact of the EL PAÍS investigation and SIRIS Academic’s own reports,” Beldengrün says. The Swiss expert emphasizes that Saudi Arabia recently launched Vision 2030, a plan to transform its economy at the stroke of a checkbook. One of the declared objectives of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – considered to be guilty of orchestrating the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – is to have at least five Saudi universities among the top 200 in the world. Beldengrün emphasizes that this goal is slipping away.

“King Abdulaziz University will drop from the Top 200. Taif University will drop from the Top 300. And Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University will disappear from the Top 400, according to our calculations. This powerful impact on university rankings is going to do a lot of damage to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 project,” the consultant notes.

EL PAÍS asked Clarivate for a list of Spanish researchers excluded for alleged bad practices. However, a company spokeswoman said that the firm cannot share these records. She also emphasizes that “scientists with incorrect behavior” demonstrated in formal research “cannot be selected for the Highly Cited Researchers [list].”

The chemist Rafael Luque no longer appears on the 2023 list, after having been expelled 13 years without employment and salary from the University of Córdoba, in southern Spain. This decision was taken after he falsely declared that, between 2019 and 2022, his main place of work was King Saud University, in Riyadh. Damià Barceló, another chemist, also doesn’t appear on the list this year: he’s being investigated by the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia after claiming, between 2016 and 2022, that his primary affiliation was King Saud University, despite the fact that he was actually the director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research in Girona, Spain.

Without clarification from Clarivate, it’s impossible to know if Luque and Barceló have been permanently expelled from the list of Highly Cited Researchers or, simply, if they’re no longer as cited as in previous years. Another Spaniard who has disappeared from the list is Rubén Domínguez, who, last year, was listed as a researcher at King Abdulaziz University, despite the fact that he was working at the Meat Technology Center in San Cibrao das Viñas, Spain. A fourth Spanish scientist who no longer appears on the list is the marine ecologist Ángel Borja, who received authorization from the Basque technology center AZTI to declare, between 2020 and 2022, that his principal place of work was King Abdulaziz University.

David Pendlebury, an analyst at Clarivate, explained this past November 15 that his company has established more “strict” criteria in the face of “the challenges of an increasingly contaminated academic [sector].” The authors of the 2023 list of Highly Cited Researchers have ruled out hyperprolific researchers who author several studies per week (as Rafael Luque did). They have also excluded experts who cite themselves too much, or those who participate in networks where members cite each other just to climb in the rankings. With these filters, the number of rejected preliminary candidates has gone from 500 in 2022 to more than 1,000 this year, according to Pendlebury.

However, food technologist Francisco Tomás Barberán still appears on the new list. In 2020, he falsely declared that he worked near Mecca, at the University of Taif, instead of in Murcia, Spain, at the Segura Center for Soil Science and Applied Biology, which belongs to the CSIC. This public body, which has more than 120 research centers in Spain, has reached an agreement with Clarivate to receive the list of Highly Cited Researchers each year before its publication, in order to “verify that their researchers’ first affiliation is the CSIC,” according to a spokesperson. This year, Tomás Barberán, an expert in intestinal microbes who presides over the Agricultural and Agri-Food Sciences area of the state research agency, has declared his actual workplace.

Another name that disappeared from the 2023 list is that of Gunasekaran Manogaran, an Indian researcher. He allegedly set up a megafactory of fraudulent scientific studies, which were mass-produced. Authorships were subsequently sold to scientists eager to publish quickly and advance in the rankings. The Manogaran case affected computer engineer Rubén González Crespo, vice-rector of the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), and three of his colleagues. Their names were on a total of 16 retracted studies, although they claim that they were victims of Manogaran.

The cleanup of the list will likely result in Saudi Arabia being left with only one university in the top 200: King Saud. This institution – which currently occupies 115th place in the Shanghai ranking – would barely fall 15 positions, despite the fact that it suddenly lost five highly-cited Spanish researchers, who lied in the Clarivate database last year. Yoran Beldengrün celebrates “the victory of scientific integrity” and invites Saudi Arabia to develop its own talent and attract academics from other countries, instead of simply paying to achieve “a virtual impact on a virtual list.”

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