IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v114y2018i3d10.1007_s11192-017-2632-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Golden-ratio as a substitute to geometric and harmonic counting to determine multi-author publication credit

Author

Listed:
  • Yannick Berker

    (University of Pennsylvania
    RWTH Aachen University
    German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ))

Abstract

Countless bibliometric indexes have been proposed to assess researchers’ productivities, in particular, in fields where the author sequence is regarded helpful in determining authors’ individual credits. Unfortunately, the most popular h-index ignores author ranks and leads to bias with multi-author publications; and of the many bibliometric counting methods proposed for assigning credit to authors, such as harmonic or geometric counting, none seems to have been widely adopted yet. In this work, I challenge the assumption that the total credit for a publication be equal to 1. This total-credit normalization assumption diminishes first-author credit and may impede adoption of multi-author-aware credit assignment rules. Other than on relative contributions, author credit could be based on variables such as accountability, which remains unchanged for the first (and potentially, the last) author regardless of additional coauthors. Therefore, I study the adequacy of several counting methods for first-author-normalized credit, giving full credit to the first author while also crediting coauthors. Harmonic counting has been shown to agree well with empirical data; however, unlike geometric counting, harmonic counting results in unbounded total credit for a publication with first-author-credit normalization in the limit of many authors. I therefore propose adaptable geometric counting and evaluate how it combines the advantages of harmonic and geometric counting through an additional parameter. I show that the golden ratio is a parameter for geometric counting that agrees as well as harmonic counting with empirical data for total-credit normalization; and I discuss the impact of using adaptable geometric counting with first-author-normalized credit. In particular, the latter features bounded total credits even when full credit is given to first authors. In conclusion, geometric counting with the golden ratio can be used for credit assignment without having to choose a parameter value, yet offers customization potential and can be combined with either normalization assumption.

Suggested Citation

  • Yannick Berker, 2018. "Golden-ratio as a substitute to geometric and harmonic counting to determine multi-author publication credit," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 839-857, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:114:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2632-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2632-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2632-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-017-2632-3?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    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. Pablo D. Batista & Mônica G. Campiteli & Osame Kinouchi, 2006. "Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(1), pages 179-189, July.
    3. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    4. Anne-Wil Harzing & Satu Alakangas & David Adams, 2014. "hIa: an individual annual h-index to accommodate disciplinary and career length differences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(3), pages 811-821, June.
    5. Hagen, Nils T., 2013. "Harmonic coauthor credit: A parsimonious quantification of the byline hierarchy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 784-791.
    6. de Mesnard, Louis, 2017. "Attributing credit to coauthors in academic publishing: The 1/n rule, parallelization, and team bonuses," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 260(2), pages 778-788.
    7. I. Lukovits & P. Vinkler, 1995. "Correct credit distribution: A model for sharing credit among coauthors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 91-98, September.
    8. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau & Guido Van Hooydonk, 2000. "Methods for accrediting publications to authors or countries: Consequences for evaluation studies," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(2), pages 145-157.
    9. 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.
    10. Leo Egghe, 2006. "Theory and practise of the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 131-152, October.
    11. Antonis Sidiropoulos & Dimitrios Katsaros & Yannis Manolopoulos, 2007. "Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(2), pages 253-280, August.
    12. Boris Maciejovsky & David V. Budescu & Dan Ariely, 2009. "—The Researcher as a Consumer of Scientific Publications: How Do Name-Ordering Conventions Affect Inferences About Contribution Credits?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 589-598, 05-06.
    13. Nils T. Hagen, 2010. "Harmonic publication and citation counting: sharing authorship credit equitably – not equally, geometrically or arithmetically," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 785-793, September.
    14. Shaon Sahoo, 2016. "Analyzing research performance: proposition of a new complementary index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(2), pages 489-504, August.
    15. Teja Tscharntke & Michael E Hochberg & Tatyana A Rand & Vincent H Resh & Jochen Krauss, 2007. "Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(1), pages 1-2, January.
    16. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2012. "Modifying h-index by allocating credit of multi-authored papers whose author names rank based on contribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 557-565.
    17. G. Van Hooydonk, 1997. "Fractional counting of multiauthored publications: Consequences for the impact of authors," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(10), pages 944-945, October.
    18. Nils T. Hagen, 2010. "Deconstructing doctoral dissertations: how many papers does it take to make a PhD?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 567-579, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Susan George & Hiran H. Lathabai & Thara Prabhakaran & Manoj Changat, 2020. "A framework towards bias-free contextual productivity assessment," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 127-157, January.
    2. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2023. "A geometric counting method adaptive to the author number," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    3. Simoes, Nadia & Crespo, Nuno, 2020. "Self-Citations and scientific evaluation: Leadership, influence, and performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    4. Yves Fassin, 2020. "The HF-rating as a universal complement to the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 965-990, November.
    5. Jingda Ding & Chao Liu & Qiao Zheng & Wei Cai, 2021. "A new method of co-author credit allocation based on contributor roles taxonomy: proof of concept and evaluation using papers published in PLOS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7561-7581, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. António Osório, 2018. "On the impossibility of a perfect counting method to allocate the credits of multi-authored publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2161-2173, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Jingda Ding & Chao Liu & Qiao Zheng & Wei Cai, 2021. "A new method of co-author credit allocation based on contributor roles taxonomy: proof of concept and evaluation using papers published in PLOS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7561-7581, September.
    5. Yves Fassin, 2020. "The HF-rating as a universal complement to the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 965-990, November.
    6. Kim, Jinseok & Kim, Jinmo, 2015. "Rethinking the comparison of coauthorship credit allocation schemes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 667-673.
    7. Jinseok Kim & Jana Diesner, 2014. "A network-based approach to coauthorship credit allocation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 587-602, October.
    8. Rahman, Mohammad Tariqur & Regenstein, Joe Mac & Kassim, Noor Lide Abu & Haque, Nazmul, 2017. "The need to quantify authors’ relative intellectual contributions in a multi-author paper," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 275-281.
    9. Pär Sundling, 2023. "Author contributions and allocation of authorship credit: testing the validity of different counting methods in the field of chemical biology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2737-2762, May.
    10. Serge Galam, 2011. "Tailor based allocations for multiple authorship: a fractional gh-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 365-379, October.
    11. Hagen, Nils T., 2013. "Harmonic coauthor credit: A parsimonious quantification of the byline hierarchy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 784-791.
    12. Osório, António (António Miguel), 2019. "The value and credits of n-authors publications," Working Papers 2072/376026, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    13. Jingda Ding & Chao Liu & Goodluck Asobenie Kandonga, 2020. "Exploring the limitations of the h-index and h-type indexes in measuring the research performance of authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1303-1322, March.
    14. Xuan Zhen Liu & Hui Fang, 2012. "Fairly sharing the credit of multi-authored papers and its application in the modification of h-index and g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(1), pages 37-49, April.
    15. Du Jian & Tang Xiaoli, 2013. "Perceptions of author order versus contribution among researchers with different professional ranks and the potential of harmonic counts for encouraging ethical co-authorship practices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 277-295, July.
    16. Susan George & Hiran H. Lathabai & Thara Prabhakaran & Manoj Changat, 2020. "A framework towards bias-free contextual productivity assessment," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 127-157, January.
    17. Sidiropoulos, A. & Gogoglou, A. & Katsaros, D. & Manolopoulos, Y., 2016. "Gazing at the skyline for star scientists," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 789-813.
    18. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    19. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2012. "Modifying h-index by allocating credit of multi-authored papers whose author names rank based on contribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 557-565.
    20. Fenghua Wang & Ying Fan & An Zeng & Zengru Di, 2019. "A nonlinear collective credit allocation in scientific publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1655-1668, June.

    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:spr:scient:v:114:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2632-3. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.