The Ranking of Researchers by Publications and Citations: Using RePEc Data

Researcher-level metrics assess a researcher’s publications and number of citations for each publication. This paper tests empirically 28 two-variable metrics, 26 of which are new in this paper, determined as geometric means from eight one-variable metrics. The 54 highest ranked researchers in RePEc are considered, 13 of whom are Nobel prize winners. One new one-variable metric, the number of citations for the 10th most cited publication, is introduced. Characteristics of the eight one-variable metrics are considered, illustrating why two-variable metrics are needed. The 54 researchers are ranked for all 36 metrics. The lowest sum of ranks for the 13 Nobel prize winners occurs for metric , the number of citations for the highest cited publication. The 13 Nobel prize winners have on average 5.3 higher rank on than on , suggesting a need for being widely cited, not captured by the -index. The metric , the square root of the product of the number of publications and the citation count, proposed as an interesting metric, correlates best with the RePEc scores. Correlations between the 36 metrics are determined. The 28 two-variable metrics are tentatively ranked according to how they capture characteristics apparently not captured by the one-variable metrics.