h-index, m-index and g-index

In 2005 Hirsch suggested a new measure to assess researchers' productivity and their academic impact. The h-index is defined as "a scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than h citations each". Harzing (2007) cites Glänzel, (2006) and reports "… the advantage of the h-index is that it combines an assessment of both quantity (number of papers) and quality (impact, or citations to these papers)". Since 2005 some researchers have measured h-index in different field. For example: Oppenheim, C. (2007). "Using the h-index to rank influential British researchers in information science and librarianship." JSIST, 58(2), 297-301.
However, h-index is not enough to measure the impact of someone's works in a field. In other words, though h-index is more appropriate than other methods including the total number of citations, the total number of papers and citations per paper, it has its own deficiencies. For example, junior researchers will inevitably have small h-index but it does not necessarily mean they are less productive. To improve these problems new supplementary measures have been proposed which are (1) m-index (accounting for varying lengths of academic careers), (2) g-index(accounting for highly-cited papers), (3) contemporary h-index (accounting for active versus inactive researchers), (4) individual h-index (accounting for differences in co-authorship patterns). To find out about these issues please have a look at the paper entitled "Reflections on the h-index" by Dr. Anne-Wil Harzing.

Popular posts from this blog

Web Search Efficacy

The following paper was published recently: Mansourian, Y. (2008). Web search efficacy: definition and implementation, Aslib Proceedings , Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 349-363. Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to report a number of factors that are perceived by web users as influential elements in their search procedure. The paper introduces a new conceptual measure called “web search efficacy” (hereafter WSE) to evaluate the performance of searches mainly based on users' perceptions. Design/methodology/approach – A rich dataset of a wider study was inductively re-explored to identify different categories that are perceived influential by web users on the final outcome of their searches. A selective review of the literature was carried out to discover to what extent previous research supports the findings of the current study. Findings – The analysis of the dataset led to the identification of five categories of influential factors. Within each group different factors have been recognize
Read more

Doctoral Forum in Aberystwyth

I attended a wonderful workshop at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth from 6th to 7th April. I delivered a presentation about my research. It was the third doctoral forum that I have attended during my PhD study. I like this kind of doctoral forums because it provides us with an opportunity to simply talk to other fellow researchers from different universities and learn new things from them. I’ll write more about the workshop in the next entries. I have uploaded some photos that I took in Aberystwyth on my homepage here and here .
Read more

Clusty

I think Clusty works more efficiently than other general-purpose search engines at present time. I like it because of the clustering method that it employs to present the search result. It seems very useful to me.
Read more