Saudi Universities Engage in Academic Fraud to Rank Among the World's Best — What's the Story?

The sudden rise of Saudi universities in both Arab and international rankings has raised doubts and questions about whether this is due to genuine academic excellence or "academic fraud" through the purchase of research and researchers to inflate their standings.

International scientific reports revealed that the top-ranked universities in the kingdom resort to "academic fraud" tactics to elevate their rankings by purchasing research from foreign researchers or "buying" the researchers themselves by changing their affiliation from scientifically advanced universities to Saudi ones.

False Affiliations 

The reasons behind this academic fraud in Saudi Arabia are unclear, though it is widespread across the Arab world. University professors speculate that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's authorities aim to show that the kingdom is "changing and advancing according to his Vision 2030."

Strangely, these false academic affiliations are sometimes accompanied by buying rankings that determine university superiority, with new rankings emerging from the UAE and Saudi Arabia that give high ratings to their universities.

Besides the world's top university rankings like the Shanghai Ranking, Times Higher Education (THE), and QS World University Rankings, a new center, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), emerged, initially based in Saudi Arabia before moving to the UAE.

Alarmingly, scientific reports and Western newspapers have revealed the production of "fake research" by so-called "paper mills," which are organizations that produce and sell fabricated or manipulated academic articles and papers for researchers to present to their universities to showcase their excellence.

According to the latest QS World University Rankings for the Arab region for 2024, released on October 18, 2023, and covering 223 universities from 18 Arab countries, Saudi universities showed prominence.

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals topped the list as the best university in the Arab region, with King Saud University ranked second. After leading the 2023 list, King Abdulaziz University dropped to fifth place.

In the 2023 QS rankings, King Abdulaziz University ranked first in the Arab world among 200 universities and 106th globally.

According to CNN Arabic on January 24, 2023, three Saudi universities ranked at the top.

This success was not limited to the Arab region; Saudi universities were also pushed up in global rankings. King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals reached 180th globally, and King Saud University ranked 203rd among the world's top 800 universities.

A report titled "The affiliation game of Saudi Arabian higher education & research institutions," published by SIRIS Academic, a European consulting firm based in Barcelona, exposed this manipulation.

It revealed that top-ranked Saudi universities and research institutions encourage leading global researchers to change their research affiliations, sometimes for money, to appear as Saudi or conduct Saudi research.

"Affiliation" in research refers to the organization or university under whose name the research is conducted.

Financial Offers 

SIRIS Academic reported that many highly cited researchers in the last decade changed their primary affiliations to Saudi universities, boosting their global rankings.

The report found that the number of globally ranked researchers affiliated with Saudi institutions increased from 27 to 109 between 2014 and 2022, many from Spain, China, the UK, Germany, and India.

The report also highlighted how these deceptive affiliations undermine the credibility of science and the genuine work of most scientists worldwide.

This issue was echoed in two reports by Nature magazine, on May 5 and May 9, 2023, warning of Saudi universities' manipulation to achieve high rankings.

Nature noted that Saudi universities improved their global standings by offering money to foreign researchers to change their primary affiliations to Saudi institutions.

Prominent researchers worldwide confirmed that Saudi universities approached them with cash offers to switch affiliations.

Spain's El Pais newspaper, on April 2, 2023, also highlighted Saudi Arabia's fraudulent practices to boost its universities' global rankings, gaining scientific and political influence.

Both El Pais and Nature noted that prominent scientists from China and Spain were instrumental in this artificial ranking boost, particularly in the prestigious Shanghai Ranking.

The Saudi regime offered money to researchers from China and Spain to change their academic affiliations.

El Pais pointed out that Saudi financial offers for published studies target a secondary factor in raising academic rankings: the number of studies published in prestigious journals like Nature and Science.

Theft Models 

Nature magazine, on May 5, 2024, provided the example of Mira Petrovic, a researcher at the Catalan Institute for Water Research in Girona, Spain, to illustrate Saudi academic fraud.

Petrovic stated that she received an email from King Saud University shortly after appearing on a global ranking list in 2018, inviting her to collaborate.

She initially thought it was a genuine collaboration proposal, but later received an email offering money to change her primary affiliation to King Saud University for 70,000 euros.

Petrovic declined the Saudi offer immediately, as it lacked any academic substance.

Blanca Landa, an agricultural engineering researcher at the CSIC Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba, told El Pais she received an offer of $1,500 per published study from a King Saud University professor, in exchange for listing her as a visiting professor with all expenses paid, which she immediately rejected.

The same report cited Luis Martinez, a professor of languages and computer systems at the University of Jaen, Spain, who accepted a $66,000 annual offer from King Saud University to list himself as an academic there, after failing to secure Spanish government funding for his projects.

El Pais also quoted Sakhr Alhuthali, a researcher at King Abdulaziz University, condemning Saudi universities' fraudulent practices to boost their global rankings by falsely listing foreign scientists as their primary affiliates.

Alhuthali emphasized that these deceptive affiliations among Spanish scientists at Saudi universities raise concerns about global academic ranking methodologies and urged scientists, institutions, and universities to take a stand against these practices.

Manipulating Rankings

The manipulation of these scientific rankings by Saudi universities extends beyond falsely attributing foreign researchers to boost their academic standing. It also involves the emergence of lesser-known rankings used to elevate the status of Saudi universities.

An article published on the World Bank Blogs on September 11, 2015, titled “Do global rankings tell the whole truth about universities in the Arab world?” highlighted this issue.

Simon Thacker, Education Specialist in the World Bank's Education Unit of the Middle East and North Africa region, stated that three main sources dominate global university rankings: the Shanghai Ranking, Times Higher Education (THE), and QS.

However, other rankings have emerged, including a new center called the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), which originated in Jeddah and later moved to the UAE.

Thacker noted that Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) began as a project in Jeddah aimed at ranking the top 100 universities worldwide but expanded in 2019 to include the top 2000 universities.

Since 2016, the headquarters of CWUR has been located in the UAE. Interestingly, as noted by Al-Estiklal, these rankings often place Saudi and UAE universities ahead of other Arab and some global universities.

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2023 are based on 13 performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

The QS World University Rankings include up to 1500 universities worldwide and are the most renowned due to their reliance on the research contributions of university faculty members.

QS also considers whether graduates or faculty members have won Nobel Prizes or the Fields Medal.

The CWTS Leiden Ranking assesses the scientific performance of more than 1200 universities globally, while the Webometrics Ranking focuses on transparency and highlights top-cited researchers.