IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0115962.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A New Bibliometric Index Based on the Shape of the Citation Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Tommaso Lando
  • Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti

Abstract

In order to improve the h-index in terms of its accuracy and sensitivity to the form of the citation distribution, we propose the new bibliometric index . The basic idea is to define, for any author with a given number of citations, an “ideal” citation distribution which represents a benchmark in terms of number of papers and number of citations per publication, and to obtain an index which increases its value when the real citation distribution approaches its ideal form. The method is very general because the ideal distribution can be defined differently according to the main objective of the index. In this paper we propose to define it by a “squared-form” distribution: this is consistent with many popular bibliometric indices, which reach their maximum value when the distribution is basically a “square”. This approach generally rewards the more regular and reliable researchers, and it seems to be especially suitable for dealing with common situations such as applications for academic positions. To show the advantages of the -index some mathematical properties are proved and an application to real data is proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Tommaso Lando & Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti, 2014. "A New Bibliometric Index Based on the Shape of the Citation Distribution," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-15, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0115962
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115962
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115962
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115962&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0115962?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 364-368.
    2. Kongo, Takumi, 2014. "An alternative axiomatization of the Hirsch index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 252-258.
    3. Peter Vinkler, 2010. "The πv-index: a new indicator to characterize the impact of journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 461-475, March.
    4. Gangan Prathap, 2014. "The zynergy-index and the formula for the h-index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(2), pages 426-427, February.
    5. van Eck, Nees Jan & Waltman, Ludo, 2008. "Generalizing the h- and g-indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 263-271.
    6. Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti, 2013. "Improving a decomposition of the h-index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(7), pages 1522-1522, July.
    7. Gangan Prathap, 2010. "The 100 most prolific economists using the p-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(1), pages 167-172, July.
    8. Chun-Ting Zhang, 2009. "The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Excess Citations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-4, May.
    9. Thomas R. Anderson & Robin K. S. Hankin & Peter D. Killworth, 2008. "Beyond the Durfee square: Enhancing the h-index to score total publication output," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 76(3), pages 577-588, September.
    10. van Eck, N.J.P. & Waltman, L., 2008. "Generalizing the h- and g-indices," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2008-049-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    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, 2016. "Normalizing the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(2), pages 645-655, February.
    2. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.

    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. Stefano Vannucci, 2010. "Dominance dimension: a common parametric formulation for integer-valued scientific impact indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(1), pages 43-48, July.
    2. 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).
    3. Ana Paula dos Santos Rubem & Ariane Lima Moura & João Carlos Correia Baptista Soares de Mello, 2015. "Comparative analysis of some individual bibliometric indices when applied to groups of researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 1019-1035, January.
    4. 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.
    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. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2010. "The h index research output measurement: Two approaches to enhance its accuracy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 407-414.
    7. Kuan, Chung-Huei & Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2011. "Positioning research and innovation performance using shape centroids of h-core and h-tail," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 515-528.
    8. 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.
    9. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2009. "A Taxonomy of Bibliometric Performance Indicators Based on the Property of Consistency," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-014-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    10. Lathabai, Hiran H., 2020. "ψ-index: A new overall productivity index for actors of science and technology," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    11. Kuan, Chung-Huei & Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2011. "Ranking patent assignee performance by h-index and shape descriptors," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 303-312.
    12. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    13. Denis Bouyssou & Thierry Marchant, 2011. "Ranking scientists and departments in a consistent manner," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(9), pages 1761-1769, September.
    14. J. E. Hirsch, 2019. "hα: An index to quantify an individual’s scientific leadership," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 673-686, February.
    15. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Hug, Sven E. & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2011. "A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 346-359.
    16. 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.
    17. Siying Li & Huawei Shen & Peng Bao & Xueqi Cheng, 2021. "$$h_u$$ h u -index: a unified index to quantify individuals across disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3209-3226, April.
    18. Kakushadze, Zura, 2016. "An index for SSRN downloads," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 9-28.
    19. Liwei Cai & Jiahao Tian & Jiaying Liu & Xiaomei Bai & Ivan Lee & Xiangjie Kong & Feng Xia, 2019. "Scholarly impact assessment: a survey of citation weighting solutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(2), pages 453-478, February.
    20. Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio & Lando, Tommaso, 2015. "On a formula for the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 762-776.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0115962. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.