IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v80y2009i1d10.1007_s11192-007-2026-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Empirical series of journal h-indices: The JCR category Horticulture as a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Yuxian Liu

    (Library of Tongji University)

  • I. K. Ravichandra Rao

    (Indian Statistical Institute (ISI)
    Universiteit Hasselt)

  • Ronald Rousseau

    (Universiteit Hasselt
    Industrial Sciences and Technology)

Abstract

Two types of series of h-indices for journals published in the field of Horticulture during the period 1998–2007 are calculated. Type I h-indices are based on yearly data, while type II h-indices use cumulative data. These h-indices are also considered in a form normalised with respect to the number of published articles. It is observed that type I h-indices, normalised or not, decrease linearly over a period of ten years. The type II series, however, is not linear in nature: it exhibits partly a concave shape. This proves that the journals (in Horticulture) do not exhibit a linear increase in h-index as argued by Hirsch in the case of life-time achievements of scientists. In the second part of the paper, an attempt is made to study the relative visibility of a journal and its change over time, based on h-indices of journals. It is shown that: the h-index over the complete period 1998–2007 of the journal Theoretical & Applied Genetics (h = 62) is much higher than that of all other journals in the field the relation between the number of publications and the type II h-index for the whole period is not an exact power law (as it would have to be if the Egghe-Rousseau model were applicable) in order to study the dynamic aspects of journal visibility, a field-relative normalised h-ratio is defined to monitor systematic changes in the field of Horticulture. Except for two journals, the Pearson correlation coefficient for yearly values of this field-relative normalised h-ratio indicates that there is no systematic change of the performance of the journals with respect to the field as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuxian Liu & I. K. Ravichandra Rao & Ronald Rousseau, 2009. "Empirical series of journal h-indices: The JCR category Horticulture as a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(1), pages 59-74, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:80:y:2009:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-007-2026-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-007-2026-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-007-2026-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-007-2026-z?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. "Hirsch's h-index: A stochastic model," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 16-25.
    2. Michael G. Banks, 2006. "An extension of the Hirsch index: Indexing scientific topics and compounds," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 161-168, October.
    3. Liu, Yuxian & Rousseau, Ronald, 2008. "Definitions of time series in citation analysis with special attention to the h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 202-210.
    4. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2006. "An informetric model for the Hirsch-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 121-129, October.
    5. Liming Liang, 2006. "h-index sequence and h-index matrix: Constructions and applications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 153-159, October.
    6. Tibor Braun & Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert, 2006. "A Hirsch-type index for journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 169-173, October.
    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. Fang Lin, 2011. "A study on power-law distribution of hostnames in the URL references," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 191-198, July.
    2. 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.

    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. Leo Egghe, 2009. "Comparative study of h-index sequences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 311-320, November.
    2. John Panaretos & Chrisovaladis Malesios, 2009. "Assessing scientific research performance and impact with single indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 635-670, December.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Ye, Fred Y. & Rousseau, Ronald, 2008. "The power law model and total career h-index sequences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 288-297.
    6. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    7. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "The h-index of h-index and of other informetric topics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(3), pages 591-605, June.
    8. Quentin L. Burrell, 2009. "On Hirsch’s h, Egghe’s g and Kosmulski’s h(2)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(1), pages 79-91, April.
    9. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    10. 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.
    11. L. Egghe, 2011. "The influence of random removal of sources and items on the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 363-370, August.
    12. Martin Macháček & Eva Kolcunová, 2008. "Hirschovo číslo a žebříčky českých ekonomů [Hirsch index and rankings of czech economists]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2008(2), pages 229-241.
    13. Wu, Jiang & Lozano, Sergi & Helbing, Dirk, 2011. "Empirical study of the growth dynamics in real career h-index sequences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 489-497.
    14. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    15. 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.
    16. Fassin, Yves, 2024. "The internal dynamics of journals’ h-cores over time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    17. L. Egghe, 2010. "On the relation between Schubert’s h-index of a single paper and its total number of received citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(1), pages 115-117, July.
    18. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2021. "The h-index formalism," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6137-6145, July.
    19. Claus-Christian Carbon, 2011. "The Carbon_h-Factor: Predicting Individuals' Research Impact at Early Stages of Their Career," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(12), pages 1-7, December.
    20. 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.

    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:spr:scient:v:80:y:2009:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-007-2026-z. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.