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Identification of conversion factor for completing-h index for the field of mathematics

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Abstract

In 2005 Hirsch introduced h-index to evaluate the research output of researchers. This had initiated a debate in the scientific community. Many researchers have evaluated the feasibility of h-index in different scientific domains. Some remained successful while others criticized the effectiveness of h-index in the domains they evaluated. After a decade of this proposal, Dienes critically evaluated the original h-index and have claimed that h index lacks something intrinsic in its definition. Subsequently Dienes introduced a conversion factor based on entire community of one domain to complete the definition of h index. Dienes has not evaluated the conversion factor on actual data; rather they have just proposed mathematical formulations. The aim of our research is to calculate that factor for the field of Mathematics and then after computing completing-h value for all the authors in this community, we have compared our results with h-index (original) and g-index values considering award winners as benchmark. We found out that complete-h contributes positively and shows comparatively better results than h-index and g-index. In top 1000 authors ranked according to these indices 95 award winners were found in complete-h, 76 were found in h-index and 64 were found when authors were ranked according to g-index.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/msc/pdfs/classifications2010.pdf.

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Correspondence to Samreen Ayaz.

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Ayaz, S., Afzal, M.T. Identification of conversion factor for completing-h index for the field of mathematics. Scientometrics 109, 1511–1524 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2122-z

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