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Comprehensive evaluation of h-index and its extensions in the domain of mathematics

Author

Listed:
  • Rizwan Ghani

    (Capital University of Science and Technology)

  • Faiza Qayyum

    (Capital University of Science and Technology)

  • Muhammad Tanvir Afzal

    (Capital University of Science and Technology)

  • Hermann Maurer

    (Graz University of Technology)

Abstract

Until the late 90’s, conventional bibliometric indices such as, publication count, citation count, and number of co-authors have extensively been employed by the scientific community to rank the researchers. In 2005, inception of a renowned ranking measure h-index has grabbed the substantial importance; the community considered h-index as a quintessential ranking measure. Subsequently, different variants and extensions of h-index have also been proposed. To date, plethora of the studies exists that harnesses h-index, its variants and extensions for researchers’ ranking. Nonetheless, the community does not agree upon a single measure that can be deemed as an optimal ranking measure. This is due to the fact that most of the contemporary studies have evaluated them either by employing a small amount of data or presumed their significance on the basis of hypothetical or imaginary case scenarios. We argue that comprehensive empirical investigation of these measures must be performed in order to tackle their real behavior. This study evaluates the h-index and its extensions by employing a comprehensive data set of authors from Mathematics discipline. The first experimental step involves the computation of correlation among the obtained values of the extensions to determine the similarity and divergence among them. Afterwards, we considered the data of international award winners from four prestigious Mathematics societies as benchmark to validate the potential of these measures by analyzing the dependence of societies on them. The outcomes revealed that overall 45% of the authors have appeared at the top occurrences of the ranked list. Out of all extensions, fraction count on paper has outperformed by bringing 55% of the awardees at top 10% of its ranked list.

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  • Rizwan Ghani & Faiza Qayyum & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal & Hermann Maurer, 2019. "Comprehensive evaluation of h-index and its extensions in the domain of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 809-822, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:118:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03007-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03007-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
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    Cited by:

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    3. Deise Deolindo Silva & Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio, 2021. "Dispersion measures for h-index: a study of the Brazilian researchers in the field of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(3), pages 1983-2011, March.
    4. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
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    6. Qurat-ul Ain & Hira Riaz & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2019. "Evaluation of h-index and its citation intensity based variants in the field of mathematics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 187-211, April.
    7. Muhammad Salman & Mohammad Masroor Ahmed & Muhammad Tanvir Afzal, 2021. "Assessment of author ranking indices based on multi-authorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4153-4172, May.

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