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A case study of the arbitrariness of the h-index and the highly-cited-publications indicator

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  • Schreiber, Michael

Abstract

The arbitrariness of the h-index becomes evident, when one requires q×h instead of h citations as the threshold for the definition of the index, thus changing the size of the core of the most influential publications of a dataset. I analyze the citation records of 26 physicists in order to determine how much the prefactor q influences the ranking. Likewise, the arbitrariness of the highly-cited-publications indicator is due to the threshold value, given either as an absolute number of citations or as a percentage of highly cited papers. The analysis of the 26 citation records shows that the changes in the rankings in dependence on these thresholds are rather large and comparable with the respective changes for the h-index.

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  • Schreiber, Michael, 2013. "A case study of the arbitrariness of the h-index and the highly-cited-publications indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 379-387.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:2:p:379-387
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2012.12.006
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    6. Schreiber, Michael, 2013. "How to derive an advantage from the arbitrariness of the g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 555-561.
    7. Brito, Ricardo & Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso, 2018. "Research assessment by percentile-based double rank analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 315-329.
    8. Shaibu Mohammed & Anthony Morgan & Emmanuel Nyantakyi, 2020. "On the influence of uncited publications on a researcher’s h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1791-1799, March.
    9. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    10. Lorna Wildgaard, 2015. "A comparison of 17 author-level bibliometric indicators for researchers in Astronomy, Environmental Science, Philosophy and Public Health in Web of Science and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 873-906, September.

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