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Ockham’s index of citation impact

Author

Listed:
  • Marek Gagolewski

    (Deakin University
    Polish Academy of Sciences
    Warsaw University of Technology)

  • Barbara Żogała-Siudem

    (Polish Academy of Sciences)

  • Grzegorz Siudem

    (Warsaw University of Technology)

  • Anna Cena

    (Warsaw University of Technology)

Abstract

We demonstrate that by using a triple of simple numerical summaries: an author’s productivity, their overall impact, and a single other bibliometric index that aims to capture the shape of the citation distribution, we can reconstruct other popular metrics of bibliometric impact with a sufficient degree of precision. We thus conclude that the use of many indices may be unnecessary – entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Such a study was possible thanks to our new agent-based model (Siudem et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 117:13896–13900, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001064117 ), which not only assumes that citations are distributed according to a mixture of the rich-get-richer rule and sheer chance, but also fits real bibliometric data quite well. We investigate which bibliometric indices have good discriminative power, which measures can be easily predicted as functions of other ones, and what implications to the research evaluation practice our findings have.

Suggested Citation

  • Marek Gagolewski & Barbara Żogała-Siudem & Grzegorz Siudem & Anna Cena, 2022. "Ockham’s index of citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2829-2845, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04345-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04345-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Hans‐Dieter Daniel, 2008. "Are there better indices for evaluation purposes than the h index? A comparison of nine different variants of the h index using data from biomedicine," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(5), pages 830-837, March.
    2. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Tommaso Lando, 2017. "The h-index as an almost-exact function of some basic statistics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1209-1228, November.
    3. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2021. "The h-index formalism," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6137-6145, July.
    4. Cena, Anna & Gagolewski, Marek & Siudem, Grzegorz & Żogała-Siudem, Barbara, 2022. "Validating citation models by proxy indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    5. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 224-232, September.
    6. Samreen Ayaz & Nayyer Masood, 2020. "Comparison of researchers’ impact indices," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-15, May.
    7. Gagolewski, Marek, 2013. "Scientific impact assessment cannot be fair," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 792-802.
    8. Lorna Wildgaard & Jesper W. Schneider & Birger Larsen, 2014. "A review of the characteristics of 108 author-level bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 125-158, October.
    9. S. Alonso & F. J. Cabrerizo & E. Herrera-Viedma & F. Herrera, 2010. "hg-index: a new index to characterize the scientific output of researchers based on the h- and g-indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 391-400, February.
    10. Barbara Żogała-Siudem & Grzegorz Siudem & Anna Cena & Marek Gagolewski, 2016. "Agent-based model for the h-index – exact solution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 89(1), pages 1-9, January.
    11. Qurat-ul Ain & Hira Riaz & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2019. "Evaluation of h-index and its citation intensity based variants in the field of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 187-211, April.
    12. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Hug, Sven E. & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2011. "A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 346-359.
    13. Barbara Żogała-Siudem & Grzegorz Siudem & Anna Cena & Marek Gagolewski, 2016. "Agent-based model for the h-index – exact solution," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 89(1), pages 1-9, January.
    14. Leo Egghe, 2006. "Theory and practise of the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 131-152, October.
    15. Qiang Wu & Peng Zhang, 2017. "Some indices violating the basic domination relation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 495-500, October.
    16. Rizwan Ghani & Faiza Qayyum & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal & Hermann Maurer, 2019. "Comprehensive evaluation of h-index and its extensions in the domain of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 809-822, March.
    17. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Tommaso Lando, 2017. "A theoretical model of the relationship between the h-index and other simple citation indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1415-1448, June.
    18. Alonso, S. & Cabrerizo, F.J. & Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F., 2009. "h-Index: A review focused in its variants, computation and standardization for different scientific fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 273-289.
    19. Mingyang Wang & Zhenyu Wang & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric indices or alternative metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1575-1595, June.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti, 2023. "Equivalent Gini coefficient, not shape parameter!," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 867-870, January.
    2. Marek Gagolewski & Barbara Żogała-Siudem & Grzegorz Siudem & Anna Cena, 2022. "Fairness in the three-dimensional model for citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 6055-6059, October.
    3. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Marek Gagolewski & Grzegorz Siudem & Barbara .Zoga{l}a-Siudem, 2023. "Equivalence of inequality indices: Three dimensions of impact revisited," Papers 2304.07479, arXiv.org.
    4. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Marek Gagolewski & Grzegorz Siudem & Barbara .Zoga{l}a-Siudem, 2023. "Gini-stable Lorenz curves and their relation to the generalised Pareto distribution," Papers 2304.07480, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    5. Żogała-Siudem, Barbara & Cena, Anna & Siudem, Grzegorz & Gagolewski, Marek, 2023. "Interpretable reparameterisations of citation models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    6. Biró, Tamás S. & Telcs, András & Józsa, Máté & Néda, Zoltán, 2023. "Gintropic scaling of scientometric indexes," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 618(C).
    7. Gangan Prathap, 2022. "Letter to the editor: comments on the paper of Gagolewski et al.: Ockham’s index of citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 6051-6054, October.
    8. Mrowinski, Maciej J. & Gagolewski, Marek & Siudem, Grzegorz, 2022. "Accidentality in journal citation patterns," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).

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