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HomeNature NewsSaudi universities entice high scientists to change affiliations — typically with money

Saudi universities entice high scientists to change affiliations — typically with money

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King Abdullah Financial District, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Credit score: Abdullah Al-Eisa/Getty

Analysis establishments in Saudi Arabia are gaming international college rankings by encouraging high researchers to vary their major affiliations, typically in change for money, and sometimes with little obligation to do significant work. That’s the conclusion of a report that exhibits how, over the previous decade, dozens of the world’s most extremely cited researchers have switched their main affiliations to universities within the nation. That, in flip, has boosted the standing of Saudi Arabian establishments in college rating tables, which think about the quotation impacts of an establishment’s researchers.

“We have now discovered a sample of sudden look of a Saudi main affiliation,” says Yoran Beldengrün, who co-authored the report, revealed on 4 Could by SIRIS Educational, a consultancy in Barcelona, Spain. “Gaming practices and deceptive affiliations feed suspicions in regards to the reliability ofscience,” says the report.

“Stating an affiliation that doesn’t reply to a piece relation, with the target of accelerating the rating of an establishment, is just not in settlement with good scientific practices,” says Pere Puigdomènech, a plant molecular biologist and member of the European Science Basis’s Discussion board on Analysis Integrity. “The manipulation of indicators is a byproduct of the idolatry of rating and indexes, that has been repeatedly denounced as misguided.”

The evaluation seemed on the record of extremely cited researchers (HCRs) maintained by publishing-analytics agency Clarivate, primarily based in London, which options students whose papers rank within the high 1% most cited papers in Clarivate’s Internet of Science database for a given discipline or 12 months. The variety of researchers on the record who’ve a main affiliation in Saudi Arabia elevated from 27 to 109 between 2014 and 2022, the report discovered. These researchers work in a variety of disciplines, and plenty of have secondary affiliations in nations together with Spain, China, the UK, Germany and India. The pattern signifies that Saudi Arabia is disproportionately flush with HCRs: in 2022, 0.44% of its researchers have been HCRs, in contrast with 0.19% of US students and 0.08% of German researchers.

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“The excessive variety of extremely cited researchers is the principle cause why some Saudi universities are ranked among the many high 150 worldwide,” says Domingo Docampo, a mathematician on the College of Vigo in Spain who consults for SIRIS, however was not concerned within the report. In a 2013 paper1, Docampo used public information, together with researcher affiliations, to breed the outcomes of the Educational Rating of World Universities, also referred to as the Shanghai Rating — a number one league desk that takes under consideration Clarivate’s HCR record.

Saudi affiliations grow: Line chart showing the number of affiliations in Saudi Arabia from 2014 to 2022.

Supply: SIRIS Educational. The affiliation recreation of Saudi Arabian greater schooling & analysis establishments https://www.sirisacademic.com/weblog/the-affiliation-game-of-saudi-arabian-higher-education-research-institutions (2023).Supply:

SIRIS’s report follows revelations in Spanish in newspaper El País, which in April reported that chemist Raphael Luque had been suspended from the College of Cordoba in Spain, the place he was employed full-time, after switching his main affiliation to KSU. The change is believed to have lowered the College of Cordoba’s place within the Shanghai Rating by greater than 140 locations. Luque, who didn’t reply to Nature’s request for remark, advised El País that he didn’t obtain cash immediately from Saudi establishments, past funding for his analysis and premium journey and inns.

Different Spanish researchers advised El País that they’ve obtained cash. Some have been pressured by their Spanish universities to surrender their Saudi positions, or are being investigated amid issues that they moved their affiliations in change for cash.

Money affords

Though the evaluation of affiliation switches is new, consciousness of the apply isn’t. SIRIS’s report doesn’t element particular monetary preparations between establishments and researchers, however for the reason that early 2010s, main researchers worldwide have reported being approached by Saudi universities with affords of money in change for being added to a researcher’s affiliations. The preparations typically appear to require minimal contributions to the establishment’s analysis.

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In 2011, Science reported that 61 researchers had signed such contracts with King Abdulaziz College in Jeddah, with various monetary phrases and ranges of contribution. On the time, King Abdulaziz College and King Saud College (KSU) in Riyadh, additionally talked about within the Science story, responded by acknowledging they’d programmes to recruit high worldwide scientists, however mentioned they used the most effective practices for worldwide collaborations; neither responded to Nature’s requests for remark for this story.

In 2014, apparently clever to the concept that establishments might recreation its desk by means of a number of affiliations, the Shanghai Rating began to contemplate solely main affiliations of researchers in Clarivate’s HCR record. (Representatives of the Shanghai Rating didn’t reply to Nature’s requests for remark.) However the apply continued, this time targeting main affiliations. Within the following years, Saudi main affiliations rose, and lecturers with secondary affiliations within the nation dropped from 130 to 10 in the identical interval, discovered SIRIS’s report (see ‘Saudi affiliations develop’).

In 2019, shortly after she appeared on Clarivate’s 2018 HCR record, chemist Mira Petrović on the Catalan Institute for Water Analysis in Girona, Spain, obtained an e-mail from KSU inviting her to kind a collaboration. “I assumed they wished to suggest an actual collaboration,” says Petrović. However after a short change, she obtained an e-mail bluntly asking to vary her affiliation in change for money. “Your main affiliation needs to be King Saud College on https://hcr.clarivate.com,” says the e-mail. “As soon as your affiliation has been modified,” it provides, “you’ll obtain 70,000 Euro.” Petrovic declined. “What they have been proposing was devoid of any educational content material,” she says.

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Clear sample

Though among the 109 HCRs on the 2022 record with a main Saudi affiliation are primarily based within the nation, many do not need what would usually be thought-about formal educational employment at a Saudi establishment. Not less than 44 (40%) have solely a analysis fellowship or are visitor researchers; Clarivate marks them on its on-line record with an asterisk. (There have been 46 asterisks within the 2022 record — two corresponded to affiliations in China, and the remainder to Saudi ones.) “Most researchers observe the established custom of utilizing the secondary affiliation for such appointments and reserve the first affiliation slot for his or her major employer,” wrote David Pendlebury, Clarivate’s head of analysis evaluation, in an e-mail to Nature.

The SIRIS report says that many affiliation modifications observe a sample: a scholar enters the HCR record with one major affiliation, then switches to a Saudi one in later years (affiliations are self-reported to Clarivate). In some circumstances, researchers swap again to their authentic establishment after a 12 months or two.

Three-quarters of Saudi-affiliated HCRs have a secondary affiliation in a special nation. That’s markedly greater than these primarily based in different nations: solely 2% of HCRs with a main affiliation in the USA have a secondary affiliation elsewhere, as do 13% with a main affiliation in Spain.

Many within the analysis group criticize reliance on rankings, as a result of they distort a college’s priorities and can’t seize an establishment’s true worth. “All of the quantitative indicators primarily based on bibliometrics are very delicate in use, and topic to gaming,” says Ghislaine Filliatreau, research-integrity officer at INSERM, the French nationwide institute for well being and medical analysis, who sits on the Shanghai Rating’s worldwide advisory board. “So, for all these forms of indicators, higher to by no means use quantifications as measurements, however as indications.”

The Saudi ministry of schooling didn’t reply to Nature’s request for remark.

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