Money can buy excellence
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.
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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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