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How to derive an advantage from the arbitrariness of the g-index

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  • Schreiber, Michael

Abstract

The definition of the g-index is as arbitrary as that of the h-index, because the threshold number g2 of citations to the g most cited papers can be modified by a prefactor at one's discretion, thus taking into account more or less of the highly cited publications within a dataset. In a case study I investigate the citation records of 26 physicists and show that the prefactor influences the ranking in terms of the generalized g-index less than for the generalized h-index. I propose specifically a prefactor of 2 for the g-index, because then the resulting values are of the same order of magnitude as for the common h-index. In this way one can avoid the disadvantage of the original g-index, namely that the values are usually substantially larger than for the h-index and thus the precision problem is substantially larger; while the advantages of the g-index over the h-index are kept. Like for the generalized h-index, also for the generalized g-index different prefactors might be more useful for investigations which concentrate only on top scientists with high citation frequencies or on junior researchers with small numbers of citations.

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  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:2:p:555-561
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.02.003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    6. 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.
    7. Michael Schreiber, 2010. "Revisiting the g-index: The average number of citations in the g-core," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 169-174, January.
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