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The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists

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Abstract

The h-index is a recent but already quite popular way of measuring research quality and quantity. However, it discounts highly-cited papers. The g-index corrects for this, but it is sensitivity to the number of never-cited papers. Besides, h- or g-index-based rankings have a large number of ties. Therefore, this paper introduces two new indices, and tests their performance for the 100 most prolific economists. A researcher has a t-number (f-number) of t (f) if t (f) is the largest number for which it holds that she has t (f) publications for which the geometric (harmonic) average number of citations is at least t (f). The new indices overcome the shortcomings of the old indices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland

    Richard S. J. Tol

  2. Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Richard S. J. Tol

  3. Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Richard S. J. Tol

  4. Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Richard S. J. Tol

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  1. Richard S. J. Tol
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Correspondence to Richard S. J. Tol.

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Tol, R.S.J. The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists. Scientometrics 80, 317–324 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2079-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-008-2079-7

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