IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v60y2009i12p2577-2586.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hirsch index rankings require scaling and higher moment

Author

Listed:
  • Aggelos Bletsas
  • John N. Sahalos

Abstract

Simple bibliometric indicators, such as average number of citations per publication per researcher, or the recently proposed Hirsch index (h‐index), are nowadays tracked by online repositories, including Web of Science (WOS), and often affect critical decision making. This work proposes appropriate scaling of the h‐index based on its probability distribution that is calculated for any underlying citation distribution. The proposed approach outperforms existing index estimation models that have focused on the expected value only (i.e., first moment). Furthermore, it is shown that average number of citations per publication per scientific field, total number of publications per researcher, as well as researcher's h‐index measured value, expected value, and standard deviation constitute the minimum information required for meaningful h‐index ranking campaigns; otherwise contradicting ranking results emerge. This work may potentially shed light to (current or future) large‐scale, h‐index‐based bibliometric evaluations.

Suggested Citation

  • Aggelos Bletsas & John N. Sahalos, 2009. "Hirsch index rankings require scaling and higher moment," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(12), pages 2577-2586, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:12:p:2577-2586
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21197
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21197
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21197?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2019. "How mean rank and mean size may determine the generalised Lorenz curve: With application to citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 387-396.
    2. Hasan, Syed Akif & Subhani, Muhammad Imtiaz & Osman, Ms. Amber, 2012. "H-Index: The key to research output assessment," MPRA Paper 39097, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. C. Malesios & S. Psarakis, 2014. "Comparison of the h-index for different fields of research using bootstrap methodology," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 521-545, January.
    4. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.
    5. 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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:12:p:2577-2586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.