Abstract
The h-index is a widely used bibliometric indicator for assessing individual scientists or other units of analysis. When evaluating aggregated authors, the h-index may produce rankings that are not consistent with the individual ones. The problem is claimed to affect all h-type indices; while the highly cited publications indicator, which comes from a different class, represents an alternative that is immune to such issue. The main objective of this work is to perform a comparative analysis of some bibliometric indicators originally designed to measure the overall impact of individual scientific production, when applied to the evaluation of groups, to investigate the consistency between the rankings at different levels of aggregation. For that, we use part of a previously reported citation database. The results indicate that, although the consistency at distinct aggregative levels is not formally complied by the h-index and all its variants, it is met with reasonable frequency.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alonso, S., Cabrerizo, F. J., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2010). hg-Index: A new index to characterize the scientific output of researchers based on the h- and g-indices. Scientometrics, 82(2), 391–400.
Anderson, T., Hankin, R., & Killworth, P. (2008). Beyond the Durfee square: Enhancing the h-index to score total publication output. Scientometrics, 76(3), 577–588.
Arencibia-Jorge, R., & Rousseau, R. (2009). Influence of individual researchers’ visibility on institutional impact: An example of Prathap’s approach to successive h-indices. Scientometrics, 79(3), 507–516.
Batista, P. D., Campiteli, M. G., & Kinouchi, O. (2006). Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests? Scientometrics, 68(1), 179–189.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2007). What do we know about the h index? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(9), 1381–1385.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2009). The state of h index research. Is the h index the ideal way to measure research performance? EMBO Reports, 10(1), 2–6.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., & Daniel, H.-D. (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, 59(5), 830–837.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., Hug, S. E., & Daniel, H.-D. (2011). A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants. Journal of Informetrics, 5(3), 346–359.
Bouyssou, D., & Marchant, T. (2014). An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices. Journal of Informetrics, 8(3), 449–477.
Braun, T., Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2006). A Hirsch-type index for journals. Scientometrics, 69(1), 169–173.
Cabrerizo, F. J., Alonso, S., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2010). q2-Index: Quantitative and qualitative evaluation based on the number and impact of papers in the Hirsch core. Journal of Informetrics, 4(1), 23–28.
Csajbók, E., Berhidi, A., Vasas, L., & Schubert, A. (2007). Hirsch-index for countries based on Essential Science Indicators data. Scientometrics, 73(1), 91–117.
Deineko, V. G., & Woeginger, G. J. (2009). A new family of scientific impact measures: The generalized Kosmulski-indices. Scientometrics, 80(3), 819–828.
Egghe, L. (2006a). An improvement of the h-index: The g-index. ISSI Newsletter, 2(1), 8–9.
Egghe, L. (2006b). Theory and practise of the g-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 131–152.
Egghe, L. (2010). The Hirsch index and related impact measures. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 44, 65–114.
Egghe, L., & Rousseau, R. (2008). An h-index weighted by citation impact. Information Processing and Management, 44(2), 770–780.
Franceschini, F., & Maisano, D. A. (2010). Analysis of the Hirsch index’s operational properties. European Journal of Operational Research, 203(2), 494–504.
Greco, S., Matarazzo, B., & Slowinski, R. (2001). Rough sets theory for multicriteria decision analysis. European Journal of Operational Research, 129(1), 1–47.
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569–16572.
Hwang, Y.-A. (2013). An axiomatization of the Hirsch-index without adopting monotonicity. Applied Mathematics and Information Sciences. An International Journal, 7(4), 1317–1322.
Jin, B. (2006). H-index: An evaluation indicator proposed by scientist. Science Focus, 1(1), 8–9.
Jin, B., Liang, L., Rousseau, R., & Egghe, L. (2007). The R- and AR-indices: Complementing the h-index. Chinese Science Bulletin, 52(6), 855–863.
Kinney, A. L. (2007). National scientific facilities and their science impact on non-biomedical research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencies, 104(46), 17943–17947.
Kosmulski, M. (2006). A new Hirsch-type index saves time and works equally well as the original h-index. ISSI Newsletter, 2(3), 4–6.
Kosmulski, M. (2007). MAXPROD—A new index for assessment of the scientific output of an individual, and a comparison. Cybermetrics, 11(1), 1–5.
Marchant, T. (2009a). An axiomatic characterization of the ranking based on the h-index and some other bibliometric rankings of authors. Scientometrics, 80(2), 327–344.
Marchant, T. (2009b). Score-based bibliometric rankings of authors. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(6), 1132–1137.
Miroiu, A. (2013). Axiomatizing the Hirsch index: Quantity and quality disjoined. Journal of Informetrics, 7(1), 10–15.
Norris, M., & Oppenheim, C. (2010). The h-index: A broad review of a new bibliometric indicator. Journal of Documentation, 66(5), 681–705.
Panaretos, J., & Malesios, C. (2009). Assessing scientific research performance and impact with single indices. Scientometrics, 81(3), 635–670.
Pomerol, J. C., & Barba-Romero, S. (2000). Multicriterion decision in management: Principles and practice (Vol. 25). New York: Springer.
Prathap, G. (2006). Hirsch-type indices for ranking institutions’ scientific research output. Current Science, 91(11), 1439.
Quesada, A. (2009). Monotonicity and the Hirsch index. Journal of Informetrics, 3(2), 158–160.
Quesada, A. (2010). More axiomatics for the Hirsch index. Scientometrics, 82(2), 413–418.
Quesada, A. (2011a). Axiomatics for the Hirsch index and the Egghe index. Journal of Informetrics, 5(3), 476–480.
Quesada, A. (2011b). Further characterizations of the Hirsch index. Scientometrics, 87(1), 107–114.
Roy, B., & Bouyssou, D. (1993). Aide Multicritère à la Décision: Méthodes et Cas. Paris: Economica.
Rubem, A. P. S., Moura, A. L. & Soares de Mello, J. C. C. B. (2013). Numerical analysis of some individual bibliometric indexes when applied to groups of researchers. In: XLV Simpósio Brasileiro de Pesquisa Operacional, SBPO 2013, Natal. Anais do XLV SBPO.
Schreiber, M. (2008). A modification of the h-index: The hm-index accounts for multiauthored manuscripts. Journal of Informetrics, 2(3), 211–216.
Schreiber, M. (2010a). Revisiting the g-index: The average number of citations in the g-core. Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(1), 169–174.
Schreiber, M. (2010b). Twenty Hirsch index variants and other indicators giving more or less preference to highly cited papers. Annalen der Physik, 522(8), 536–554.
Schubert, A. (2007). Successive h-indices. Scientometrics, 70(1), 201–205.
Thompson, D. F., Callen, E. C., & Nahata, M. C. (2009). New indices in scholarship assessment. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 73(6), 111.
Tol, R. S. (2009). The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists. Scientometrics, 80(2), 317–324.
Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2008). Generalizing the h- and g-indices. Journal of Informetrics, 2(4), 263–271.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics, 67(3), 491–502.
Vinkler, P. (2009). The π-index: A new indicator for assessing scientific impact. Journal of Information Science, 35(5), 602–612.
Waltman, L., & Van Eck, N. J. (2012). The inconsistency of the h-index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(2), 406–415.
Woeginger, G. J. (2008a). An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index. Mathematical Social Sciences, 56(2), 224–232.
Woeginger, G. J. (2008b). A symmetry axiom for scientific impact indices. Journal of Informetrics, 2(4), 298–303.
Woeginger, G. J. (2008c). An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index. Journal of Informetrics, 2(4), 364–368.
Woeginger, G. J. (2009). Generalizations of Egghe’s g-index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(6), 1267–1273.
Wu, Q. (2010). The w-index: A measure to assess scientific impact by focusing on widely cited papers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(3), 609–614.
Zhang, C.-T. (2009). The e-index, complementing the h-index for excess citations. PLoS One, 4(5), e5429. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005429.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rubem, A.P.S., de Moura, A.L. & Soares de Mello, J.C.C.B. Comparative analysis of some individual bibliometric indices when applied to groups of researchers. Scientometrics 102, 1019–1035 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1428-y
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1428-y