IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v1y2007i3p204-213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Convergent validation of peer review decisions using the h index

Author

Listed:
  • Bornmann, Lutz
  • Daniel, Hans-Dieter

Abstract

Hirsch [Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569–16572] has proposed the h index as a single-number criterion to evaluate the scientific output of a researcher. We investigated the convergent validity of decisions for awarding long-term fellowships to post-doctoral researchers as practiced by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (B.I.F.) by using the h index. Our study examined 414 B.I.F. applicants (64 approved and 350 rejected) with a total of 1586 papers. The results of our study show that the applicants’h indices correlate substantially with standard bibliometric indicators. Even though the h indices of approved B.I.F. applicants on average (arithmetic mean and median) are higher than those of rejected applicants (and with this, fundamentally confirm the validity of the funding decisions), the distributions of the h indices show in part overlaps that we categorized as type I error (falsely drawn approval) or type II error (falsely drawn rejection). Approximately, one-third of the decisions to award a fellowship to an applicant show a type I error, and about one-third of the decisions not to award a fellowship to an applicant show a type II error. Our analyses of possible reasons for these errors show that the applicant's field of study but not personal ties between the B.I.F. applicant and the B.I.F. can increase or decrease the risks for type I and type II errors.

Suggested Citation

  • Bornmann, Lutz & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2007. "Convergent validation of peer review decisions using the h index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 204-213.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:1:y:2007:i:3:p:204-213
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2007.01.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157707000302
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2007.01.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ronan M. Conroy, 2002. "Choosing an appropriate real-life measure of effect size:the case of a continuous predictor and a binary outcome," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 2(3), pages 290-295, August.
    2. Anthony F. J. Raan, 2006. "Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(3), pages 491-502, June.
    3. Lutz Bornmann & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2005. "Selection of research fellowship recipients by committee peer review. Reliability, fairness and predictive validity of Board of Trustees' decisions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 297-320, April.
    4. Lutz Bornmann & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2005. "Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 65(3), pages 391-392, December.
    5. Lutz Bornmann & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2005. "Committee peer review at an international research foundation: predictive validity and fairness of selection decisions on post-graduate fellowship applications," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 15-20, April.
    6. Lutz Bornmann & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2006. "Selecting scientific excellence through committee peer review - A citation analysis of publications previously published to approval or rejection of post-doctoral research fellowship applicants," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(3), pages 427-440, September.
    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. 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.
    2. Kakushadze, Zura, 2016. "An index for SSRN downloads," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 9-28.
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2008. "Latent Markov modeling applied to grant peer review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 217-228.
    4. Pablo Jensen & Jean-Baptiste Rouquier & Yves Croissant, 2009. "Testing bibliometric indicators by their prediction of scientists promotions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(3), pages 467-479, March.
    5. Vieira, Elizabeth S. & Cabral, José A.S. & Gomes, José A.N.F., 2014. "How good is a model based on bibliometric indicators in predicting the final decisions made by peers?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 390-405.
    6. Bornmann, Lutz & Leydesdorff, Loet & Van den Besselaar, Peter, 2010. "A meta-evaluation of scientific research proposals: Different ways of comparing rejected to awarded applications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 211-220.
    7. Franceschet, Massimo & Costantini, Antonio, 2011. "The first Italian research assessment exercise: A bibliometric perspective," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 275-291.
    8. Mariana Pires Luz & Carla Marques-Portella & Mauro Mendlowicz & Sonia Gleiser & Evandro Silva Freire Coutinho & Ivan Figueira, 2008. "Institutional h-index: The performance of a new metric in the evaluation of Brazilian Psychiatric Post-graduation Programs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(2), pages 361-368, November.
    9. Stefan Hornbostel & Susan Böhmer & Bernd Klingsporn & Jörg Neufeld & Markus Ins, 2009. "Funding of young scientist and scientific excellence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(1), pages 171-190, April.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2009. "Extent of type I and type II errors in editorial decisions: A case study on Angewandte Chemie International Edition," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 348-352.
    11. Squazzoni, Flaminio & Gandelli, Claudio, 2012. "Saint Matthew strikes again: An agent-based model of peer review and the scientific community structure," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 265-275.
    12. Vanclay, Jerome K., 2008. "Ranking forestry journals using the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 326-334.
    13. Alonso, S. & Cabrerizo, F.J. & Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F., 2009. "h-Index: A review focused in its variants, computation and standardization for different scientific fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 273-289.

    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. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    2. Bornmann, Lutz & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2007. "Gatekeepers of science—Effects of external reviewers’ attributes on the assessments of fellowship applications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 83-91.
    3. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2008. "Latent Markov modeling applied to grant peer review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 217-228.
    4. Vieira, Elizabeth S. & Cabral, José A.S. & Gomes, José A.N.F., 2014. "How good is a model based on bibliometric indicators in predicting the final decisions made by peers?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 390-405.
    5. 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.
    6. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 364-368.
    7. Amin Mazloumian, 2012. "Predicting Scholars' Scientific Impact," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-5, November.
    8. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2012. "HistCite analysis of papers constituting the h index research front," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 285-288.
    9. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 224-232, September.
    10. Miguel A. García-Pérez, 2009. "A multidimensional extension to Hirsch’s h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 779-785, December.
    11. Antonis Sidiropoulos & Dimitrios Katsaros & Yannis Manolopoulos, 2007. "Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(2), pages 253-280, August.
    12. Yuxian Liu & Ronald Rousseau, 2009. "Properties of Hirsch-type indices: the case of library classification categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(2), pages 235-248, May.
    13. J. W. Fedderke, 2013. "The objectivity of national research foundation peer review in South Africa assessed against bibliometric indexes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(2), pages 177-206, November.
    14. Sigifredo Laengle & José M. Merigó & Nikunja Mohan Modak & Jian-Bo Yang, 2020. "Bibliometrics in operations research and management science: a university analysis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 294(1), pages 769-813, November.
    15. Jacques Wainer & Paula Vieira, 2013. "Correlations between bibliometrics and peer evaluation for all disciplines: the evaluation of Brazilian scientists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(2), pages 395-410, August.
    16. 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.
    17. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Emanuela Reale, 2019. "Peer review versus bibliometrics: Which method better predicts the scholarly impact of publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 537-554, October.
    18. Jiancheng Guan & Xia Gao, 2008. "Comparison and evaluation of Chinese research performance in the field of bioinformatics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(2), pages 357-379, May.
    19. Hamid Bouabid & Ben R. Martin, 2009. "Evaluation of Moroccan research using a bibliometric-based approach: investigation of the validity of the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(2), pages 203-217, February.
    20. Vieira, E.S. & Gomes, J.A.N.F., 2010. "A research impact indicator for institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 581-590.

    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:eee:infome:v:1:y:2007:i:3:p:204-213. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    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.