The company that produces the prestigious List of Highly Cited Scientists has excluded to more than 1,000 for alleged fraud, by tightening its admission criteria after the Saudi plot scandal uncovered by EL PAÍS in April. This list, made by the London multinational Clarivate, includes almost 7,000 researchers whose studies are the most mentioned by other colleagues, a supposed indicator of excellence. Influential international university rankings, such as he ranking from Shanghai, they take into account the number of highly cited professors to promote or demote an institution. These scientists should be the best in the world, but in recent years the list was a drain into which mediocre researchers entered by doing all kinds of cheating.
The Saudi Arabian dictatorship, determined to clean up its image, has set itself the goal of at least five of its universities are among the top 200 in the rankings internationals by 2030. Some Saudi institutions have taken a shady shortcut: paying up to €70,000 annually to highly cited foreign scientists to lie in the Clarivate database and declare that their primary workplace is an Arab university. Last year, 11 highly cited Spanish scientists falsely claimed that their primary affiliation was in Saudi Arabia. After the controversy, this year there are none. The largest scientific organization in Spain, the CSIC, has just opened disciplinary proceedings against its five researchers allegedly involved.
Saudi universities will collapse in the next rankings international, according a new analysis from the Barcelona consultancy SIRIS Academic, which advises academic entities around the world. Arab 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 and this year it only has 12. This institution will fall more than fifty positions in the ranking from Shanghai, from its current position 166, according to the calculation of the Swiss specialist Yoran Beldengrün, main author of the SIRIS Academic report. This consultancy already revealed in April that Saudi Arabia had, suspiciously, a proportion of highly cited scientists who multiplied by five to that of Germany.
“In Saudi universities there is a brutal drop in the number of highly cited scientists. It is not a natural fall, but caused by The repercussion of the EL PAÍS investigation and SIRIS Academic’s own reports,” says Beldengrün. The Swiss expert emphasizes that Saudi Arabia has launched Vision 2030, a plan to transform your economy with a checkbook. One of the declared objectives of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – guilty according to the United States of the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – is to have at least five Saudi universities among the top 200. Beldengrün emphasizes that this goal is moving 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 rankings university students is going to do a lot of damage to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 project,” says the consultant.
In Saudi universities there is a brutal drop in the number of highly cited scientists
Yoran Beldengrün, SIRIS Academic consultant
This newspaper has asked Clarivate for a list of Spanish researchers excluded for alleged bad practices, but a company spokeswoman states that they cannot share these records. The same source emphasizes that “scientists with incorrect behavior” demonstrated in formal research “cannot be selected as Highly Cited.” Chemist Rafael Luque no longer appears on the 2023 list, expelled from the University of Córdoba with a sanction of 13 years without employment and salary after falsely declaring between 2019 and 2022 that his main place of work was the King Saud University, in Riyadh. . Nor does the chemist Damià Barceló appear this year, investigated by the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia after claiming, between 2016 and 2022, that his primary affiliation was the King Saúd University, despite the fact that he was actually the director of the Catalan Water Research Institute. in Girona.
Without clarification from Clarivate, it is impossible to know if Luque and Barceló have been expelled from the List of Highly Cited Scientists or, simply, they are no longer as cited as in previous years. Another Spaniard who has disappeared from the list is Ruben Dominguez, who last year was listed as a researcher at the King Abdulaziz University, despite the fact that he worked at the Meat Technology Center of the Xunta de Galicia, in San Cibrao das Viñas (Ourense). A fourth national scientist who no longer appears is the marine ecologist Angel Borjawho received authorization from the Basque technology center AZTI to declare between 2020 and 2022 that he worked first at the King Abdulaziz University.
David Pendleburyan analyst at Clarivate, explained on November 15 that his company has established more “strict” criteria in the face of “the challenges of an academic record.” increasingly polluted”. The authors of the 2023 List of Highly Cited Scientists have ruled out hyperprolific researchers, who sign several studies per week, as Rafael Luque himself does. They have also excluded experts who cite themselves a lot or participate in networks in which some baselessly cite others, just to climb the ranks. 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.
The academic record is increasingly contaminated
David Pendlebury, Clarivate analyst
The food technologist does appear on the new list Francisco Tomas Barberan, who in 2020 falsely declared that he worked near Mecca, at the University of Taif, instead of in Murcia, at the Segura Center for Soil Science and Applied Biology, belonging to the CSIC. This public body, with more than 120 research centers in Spain, has reached an agreement with Clarivate to receive the List of Highly Cited Scientists each year before its publication “to verify that the researchers’ first affiliation is that of the CSIC” , according to a spokesperson. Tomás Barberán, an expert in intestinal microbes who presides over the Agricultural and Agri-Food Sciences area of the State Research Agency, has this year precisely declared his actual workplace.
Another name that disappears from the 2023 list is that of Gunasekaran Manogaran, an Indian researcher who allegedly set up a megafactory of fraudulent scientific studies, which were mass-produced and whose authorship was sold to Asian scientists eager to publish quickly to advance. Manogaran’s case affected computer engineer Rubén González Crespo, vice-rector of the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), and three of his collaborators. Together they make up 16 retracted studies, but they claim that they were victims of the Indian researcher.
The cleanup on the List of Highly Cited Scientists will likely result in Saudi Arabia being left with only one university in the top 200, King Saud. This institution, which currently occupies position 115 in the ranking from Shanghai, would barely fall fifteen positions, despite the fact that it has suddenly lost five highly cited Spanish researchers who lied in the Clarivate database last year: Luis Martínez, professor of Computer Languages and Systems at the University of Jaén ; Andrés Castellanos, CSIC physicist; Josep Maria Haro, psychiatrist at the Sant Joan de Déu Health Park; and the chemists Rafael Luque and Damià Barceló. Consultant Yoran Beldengrün celebrates “the victory of scientific integrity” and invites Saudi Arabia to develop its own talent and attract that of other countries, instead of simply paying to achieve “a virtual impact on a virtual list.”
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