Rate of Waste in Authority Names for the Web of Science Journals among Saudi Universities

The current study aimed at measuring the rate of loss in search results of the actual number of publications in journals indexed by Web of Science when not using the accurate official authority name as indicated by the Ministry of Education. Conducting a search using the authority name does not always yield complete results of all existing publications. Researchers in Saudi universities tend to use up to 10 different random names of universities when searching. This interesting fact has prompted the authors of this paper to conduct a study on the search results of 30 Saudi universities using the authority name as indicated by the Ministry of Education. The statistical analyses revealed that there is a high tendency for the wrong use of authority names. Results show that 8 universities were not found in the search results. Furthermore, other universities are losing between 10 and 30% of search results that reflect the actual number of publications. Consequently, the rank of each university, as well as the general rank of Saudi universities in the Web of Science, will be affected.