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Scientific impact evaluation and the effect of self‐citations: Mitigating the bias by discounting the h‐index

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  • Emilio Ferrara
  • Alfonso E. Romero

Abstract

In this article, we propose a measure to assess scientific impact that discounts self‐citations and does not require any prior knowledge of their distribution among publications. This index can be applied to both researchers and journals. In particular, we show that it fills the gap of the h‐index and similar measures that do not take into account the effect of self‐citations for authors or journals impact evaluation. We provide 2 real‐world examples: First, we evaluate the research impact of the most productive scholars in computer science (according to DBLP Computer Science Bibliography, Universität Trier, Trier, Germany); then we revisit the impact of the journals ranked in the Computer Science Applications section of the SCImago Journal & Country Rank ranking service (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, University of Granada, Extremadura, Madrid, Spain). We observe how self‐citations, in many cases, affect the rankings obtained according to different measures (including h‐index and ch‐index), and show how the proposed measure mitigates this effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Emilio Ferrara & Alfonso E. Romero, 2013. "Scientific impact evaluation and the effect of self‐citations: Mitigating the bias by discounting the h‐index," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(11), pages 2332-2339, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:11:p:2332-2339
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22976
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    Cited by:

    1. Muhammad Sajid Qureshi & Ali Daud, 2021. "Fine-grained academic rankings: mapping affiliation of the influential researchers with the top ranked HEIs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8331-8361, October.
    2. Ibrahim Shehatta & Abdullah M. Al-Rubaish, 2019. "Impact of country self-citations on bibliometric indicators and ranking of most productive countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 775-791, August.
    3. Tehmina Amjad & Javeria Munir, 2021. "Investigating the impact of collaboration with authority authors: a case study of bibliographic data in field of philosophy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4333-4353, May.
    4. Martin Szomszor & David A. Pendlebury & Jonathan Adams, 2020. "How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1119-1147, May.
    5. Tehmina Amjad & Yusra Rehmat & Ali Daud & Rabeeh Ayaz Abbasi, 2020. "Scientific impact of an author and role of self-citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 915-932, February.

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