IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-08c00011.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Robustness of the h-index: a mathematical approach

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Michel Courtault

    (CEPN (Centre d'Economie de l''Université Paris Nord), UMR 7115)

  • Naïla Hayek

    (Université de Franche-Comté, and Laboratoire Marin Mersenne, Université de Paris I)

Abstract

The h-index is an index recently proposed by Hirsch (2005) to measure scientific achievement by individual scholars. It is a compound measure of publications and citations. We show the robustness of this index. This means that h-index increases with both the number of publications and the number of citations only when these numbers are significant.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Michel Courtault & Naïla Hayek, 2008. "On the Robustness of the h-index: a mathematical approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(78), pages 1-9.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08c00011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2008/Volume3/EB-08C00011A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:2:p:187-208 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Leo Egghe, 2006. "Theory and practise of the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 131-152, October.
    3. Wolfgang Glänzel, 2006. "On the h-index - A mathematical approach to a new measure of publication activity and citation impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(2), pages 315-321, May.
    4. Ursprung Heinrich W. & Zimmer Markus, 2007. "Who is the ”Platz-Hirsch“ of the German Economics Profession?: A Citation Analysis," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 227(2), pages 187-208, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Courtault, Jean-Michel & Hayek, Naïla & Rimbaux, Eric & Zhu, Tong, 2010. "Research in economics and management in France: A bibliometric study using the h-index," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 329-337, April.
    2. Malesios, C., 2016. "Measuring the robustness of the journal h-index with respect to publication and citation values: A Bayesian sensitivity analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 719-731.
    3. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2013. "Evaluating research institutions: the potential of the success-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 85-101, July.
    4. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2013. "The effect of database dirty data on h-index calculation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 1179-1188, June.
    5. Lorna Wildgaard, 2015. "A comparison of 17 author-level bibliometric indicators for researchers in Astronomy, Environmental Science, Philosophy and Public Health in Web of Science and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 873-906, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deming Lin & Tianhui Gong & Wenbin Liu & Martin Meyer, 2020. "An entropy-based measure for the evolution of h index research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2283-2298, December.
    2. Rok Blagus & Brane L. Leskošek & Janez Stare, 2015. "Comparison of bibliometric measures for assessing relative importance of researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 1743-1762, December.
    3. Rodrigo Costas & María Bordons, 2008. "Is g-index better than h-index? An exploratory study at the individual level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(2), pages 267-288, November.
    4. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2008:i:78:p:1-9 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Marcel Clermont & Alexander Dirksen & Barbara Scheidt & Dirk Tunger, 2017. "Citation metrics as an additional indicator for evaluating research performance? An analysis of their correlations and validity," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 10(2), pages 249-279, October.
    6. Chen, Dar-zen & Huang, Mu-hsuan & Ye, Fred Y., 2013. "A probe into dynamic measures for h-core and h-tail," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 129-137.
    7. R. G. Raj & A. N. Zainab, 2012. "Relative measure index: a metric to measure the quality of journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 305-317, November.
    8. Vîiu, Gabriel-Alexandru, 2016. "A theoretical evaluation of Hirsch-type bibliometric indicators confronted with extreme self-citation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 552-566.
    9. Aurelia Magdalena Pisoschi & Claudia Gabriela Pisoschi, 2016. "Is open access the solution to increase the impact of scientific journals?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1075-1095, November.
    10. Gaviria-Marin, Magaly & Merigó, José M. & Baier-Fuentes, Hugo, 2019. "Knowledge management: A global examination based on bibliometric analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 194-220.
    11. Kaur, Jasleen & Radicchi, Filippo & Menczer, Filippo, 2013. "Universality of scholarly impact metrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 924-932.
    12. Vinayak, & Raghuvanshi, Adarsh & kshitij, Avinash, 2023. "Signatures of capacity development through research collaborations in artificial intelligence and machine learning," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    13. R. Karpagam & S. Gopalakrishnan & M. Natarajan & B. Ramesh Babu, 2011. "Mapping of nanoscience and nanotechnology research in India: a scientometric analysis, 1990–2009," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(2), pages 501-522, November.
    14. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2013. "The Relevance of the “h-” and “g-” Index to Economics in the Context of A Nation-Wide Research Evaluation Scheme: The New Zealand Case," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(1), pages 81-94, March.
    15. Klaus Wohlrabe, 2014. "Eine Kritik des FAZ-Ökonomenrankings 2013," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 67(13), pages 63-67, July.
    16. Ash Mohammad Abbas, 2011. "Weighted indices for evaluating the quality of research with multiple authorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 107-131, July.
    17. Michael Zhang, 2021. "Announcement of Retraction," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 13(12), pages 1-14, December.
    18. Richard S. J. Tol, 2009. "The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 317-324, August.
    19. Soutar, Geoffrey N. & Murphy, Jamie, 2009. "Journal quality: A Google Scholar analysis," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 150-153.
    20. Rolf Ketzler & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2009. "Publications: German economic research institutes on track," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(1), pages 231-252, July.
    21. Thor, Andreas & Marx, Werner & Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz, 2016. "Introducing CitedReferencesExplorer (CRExplorer): A program for reference publication year spectroscopy with cited references standardization," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 503-515.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-08c00011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.