Coping with the Inequity and Inefficiency of the H-Index: A Cross-Disciplinary Analytical Model

Abstract

This paper develops an empirically validated theoretical model of a researcher’s publication goal to assess which standardisations and policies are more likely to achieve equity and efficiency in different disciplines. The main theoretical insight is that there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency, as well as between networking activity and knowledge-diffusion activity. The main empirical insight is that, in order to achieve equity and efficiency, the original version of the H index should be replaced by a version that is standardised per author and per year and calculated by excluding reciprocal citations and publications other than peer-reviewed articles.

Appendices

Appendix I: Sample Statistics

See Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2 Some cross-disciplinary statistics from Scopus for a sample of 10,000 authors

Table 3 Summary of statistics from the whole Scopus dataset of articles

Appendix II: Validation Analysis

If the acceptable degree of the authorship effect is 5% rather than 10%, Fig. 1 becomes Fig. 5, whereas if the acceptable authorship effect is 20% rather than 10%, Fig. 1 becomes Fig. 6. Both these numerical solutions validate the model (i.e., the specified distance thresholds represented by the curved lines contain the vast majority of the data points).

Fig. 5

Distance (curved line, % expressed as a decimal value) from equity (i.e., A* = 1) as a function of C_x (i.e., average per author citations for articles) and C_y (i.e., average per author citations for non-articles) if e_c = 54.4. Blue points = citations per capita; red points = citations per capita per year. Table 1 provides the C_x and C_y values for each discipline (Color figure online)

Fig. 6

Distance (curved lines,  % expressed as a decimal value) from equity (i.e., A* = 1) as a function of C_x (i.e., average per author citations for articles) and C_y (i.e., average per author citations for non-articles) if e_c = 12.85. Blue points = citations per capita; red points = citations per capita per year. Table 1 provides the C_x and C_y values for each discipline. Legend: ab agricultural and biological sciences, ah arts and humanities, bm biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, ba business, management and accounting, ce chemical engineering, ch chemistry, co computer science, ds decision sciences, ep earth and planetary sciences, ef economics, econometrics and finance, en energy, e.g. engineering, ev environmental science, im immunology and microbiology, ma materials science, mt mathematics, me medicine, ne neuroscience, nu nursing, pp pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics, pa physics and astronomy, ps psychology, so social sciences, ve veterinary, de dentistry, hp health professions (Color figure online)