IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v7y2013i4p774-783.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The h-index: A case of the tail wagging the dog?

Author

Listed:
  • Burrell, Quentin L.

Abstract

From the way that it was initially defined (Hirsch, 2005), the h-index naturally encourages focus on the most highly cited publications of an author and this in turn has led to (predominantly) a rank-based approach to its investigation. However, Hirsch (2005) and Burrell (2007a) both adopted a frequency-based approach leading to general conjectures regarding the relationship between the h-index and the author's publication and citation rates as well as his/her career length. Here we apply the distributional results of Burrell (2007a, 2013b) to three published data sets to show that a good estimate of the h-index can often be obtained knowing only the number of publications and the number of citations. (Exceptions can occur when an author has one or more “outliers” in the upper tail of the citation distribution.) In other words, maybe the main body of the distribution determines the h-index, not the wild wagging of the tail. Furthermore, the simple geometric distribution turns out to be the key.

Suggested Citation

  • Burrell, Quentin L., 2013. "The h-index: A case of the tail wagging the dog?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 774-783.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:4:p:774-783
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.06.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157713000515
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2013.06.004?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. Burrell, Quentin L., 2007. "On the h-index, the size of the Hirsch core and Jin's A-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 170-177.
    2. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2012. "The Hirsch index of a shifted Lotka function and its relation with the impact factor," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(5), pages 1048-1053, May.
    3. Burrell, Quentin L., 2007. "Hirsch's h-index: A stochastic model," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 16-25.
    4. Quentin L. Burrell, 2013. "Formulae for the h-index: A lack of robustness in Lotkaian informetrics?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(7), pages 1504-1514, July.
    5. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2006. "An informetric model for the Hirsch-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 121-129, October.
    6. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Comparison of different mathematical functions for the analysis of citation distribution of papers of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 36-49.
    7. Fred Y. Ye, 2009. "An investigation on mathematical models of the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 493-498, November.
    8. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2012. "The Hirsch index of a shifted Lotka function and its relation with the impact factor," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(5), pages 1048-1053, May.
    9. Rousseau, Ronald & García-Zorita, Carlos & Sanz-Casado, Elias, 2013. "The h-bubble," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 294-300.
    10. Fred Y. Ye, 2011. "A unification of three models for the h-index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(1), pages 205-207, January.
    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. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Tommaso Lando, 2017. "A theoretical model of the relationship between the h-index and other simple citation indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1415-1448, June.
    2. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2019. "How mean rank and mean size may determine the generalised Lorenz curve: With application to citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 387-396.
    3. Brandão, Luana Carneiro & Soares de Mello, João Carlos Correia Baptista, 2019. "A multi-criteria approach to the h-index," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 357-363.
    4. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.
    5. Sangwal, Keshra, 2014. "Distributions of citations of papers of individual authors publishing in different scientific disciplines: Application of Langmuir-type function," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 972-984.
    6. Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz, 2021. "Disruption indices and their calculation using web-of-science data: Indicators of historical developments or evolutionary dynamics?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).

    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. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.
    2. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti & Tommaso Lando, 2017. "A theoretical model of the relationship between the h-index and other simple citation indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1415-1448, June.
    3. Quentin L. Burrell, 2014. "The individual author’s publication–citation process: theory and practice," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 725-742, January.
    4. Tokmachev, Andrey M., 2023. "Hidden scales in statistics of citation indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    5. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2019. "How mean rank and mean size may determine the generalised Lorenz curve: With application to citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 387-396.
    6. Egghe, L., 2014. "Impact coverage of the success-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 384-389.
    7. Wei, Shelia X. & Tong, Tong & Rousseau, Ronald & Wang, Wanru & Ye, Fred Y., 2022. "Relations among the h-, g-, ψ-, and p-index and offset-ability," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    8. Sangwal, Keshra, 2013. "Comparison of different mathematical functions for the analysis of citation distribution of papers of individual authors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 36-49.
    9. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    10. Liu, Joan Q. & Rousseau, Ronald & Wang, Mona S. & Ye, Fred Y., 2013. "Ratios of h-cores, h-tails and uncited sources in sets of scientific papers and technical patents," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 190-197.
    11. Egghe, L., 2013. "The functional relation between the impact factor and the uncitedness factor revisited," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 183-189.
    12. Zhao, Star X. & Rousseau, Ronald & Ye, Fred Y., 2011. "h-Degree as a basic measure in weighted networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 668-677.
    13. M. Ausloos, 2013. "A scientometrics law about co-authors and their ranking: the co-author core," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 895-909, June.
    14. Maziar Montazerian & Edgar Dutra Zanotto & Hellmut Eckert, 2019. "A new parameter for (normalized) evaluation of H-index: countries as a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 1065-1078, March.
    15. J. Martin Zyl, 2013. "The generalized Pareto distribution fitted to research outputs of countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 1099-1109, March.
    16. Unnikrishnan Nair, N. & Vineshkumar, B., 2022. "Modelling informetric data using quantile functions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    17. Balakrishnan, N. & Sarabia, José María & Kolev, Nikolai, 2010. "A simple relation between the Leimkuhler curve and the mean residual life," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 602-607.
    18. Anna Tietze & Philip Hofmann, 2019. "The h-index and multi-author hm-index for individual researchers in condensed matter physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 171-185, April.
    19. Quentin L. Burrell, 2007. "Hirsch index or Hirsch rate? Some thoughts arising from Liang’s data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(1), pages 19-28, October.
    20. Li Zhai & Xiangbin Yan & Bin Zhu, 2014. "The H l -index: improvement of H-index based on quality of citing papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1021-1031, February.

    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:7:y:2013:i:4:p:774-783. 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.