Money can buy excellence

Nieuws | de redactie
11 december 2011 | Two Saudi Arabian universities massively recruited top scientists at Harvard, Cambridge and co. to publish their research as affiliated. This way, King Saud University made it from unlisted into the top 200/300 bracket of the Shanghai ranking. “It’s just capitalism,” a Cambridge affiliate says.

Publishing articles gets you citations. Citations create yourreputation. Reputation brings you money. This is a fundamentalmechanism behind research funding. Two universities in Saudi Arabianow show that you can turn this causality upside down.

An investigation by Science Magazine revealed thatthe King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and King Saud University (KSU) engaged top researchers worldwide to winthem over as affiliates boosting the visibility of KAU and KSU inresearch journals. Offering salaries of around $70.000, the twouniversities boosted its standing in rankings by having scientistsat Harvard, Cambridge and co. list themselves as affiliates of theSaudi Arabian institutes.

From nowhere to top 200/300 ranking

Within 2 years, the KSU almost tripled its affiliatedpublications to a total of 1211. This did pay off ranking wise.Between 2006 and now, KSU jumped from place 2910 to 186 in theWebometrics rankings. In the prominent Shanghai ranking it got intothe top 200/300 bracket despite not even being listed a couple ofyears ago.

Surender Jain, a former professor of Ohio University in Athensand current advisor to KAU, admitted that primary goal of thisstrategy was to “improve the visibility and ranking of KingAbdulaziz University”. Still “we’re not just giving away money”,but genuinely wish these top scientists to contribute to researchdone at our institute, Jain stated.

Gerry Gilmore, astronomer at Cambridge University and KAUaffiliate, says that “it’s just capitalism. They have the capitaland they want to build something out of it. Universities buypeople’s reputations all the time. In principle, this is nodifferent from Harvard hiring a prominent researcher.”


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