new citation index: the h-bar value
October 9, 2008 at 6:43 pm | sam | literature, science communityI commented a while ago about the Hirsch h index. In fact, it was one of my first posts 2.5 years ago. Since then, the h index has become the standard in reporting the extent of an author citations. ISI and ResearcherID report h index along with total citations, and scientists have started to include their h value on their CVs and resumés.
But there’s still the problem of self-citation: citing ones own papers in later papers or reviews can increase ones own h index.
PI | h | ![]() |
Pande | 28 | 4.5 |
Moerner | 43 | 6.8 |
Andersen | 48 | 7.6 |
Fayer | 51 | 8.1 |
Boxer | 52 | 8.3 |
Zare | 94 | 15.0 |
I now introduce a modification of the Hirsch h index to solve the self-citation problem. The “h-bar index.” The math is very simple: because each researcher cites himself or herself multiple times in each paper, total citations must be divided by a normalizing constant to account for these self-citations. Therefore an author’s index is his or her h index divided by 2π.
The table above compares the Hirsch h index and the Lord index of the same scientists I listed in my original post. I argue that the Lord
index is a more accurate measure of an individual’s true citation record.
7 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress, Theme Based on "Pool" by Borja Fernandez
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS.
^Top^
NERD!!! :D
Comment by psi*psi — October 9, 2008 #
You made brain hurts!
Comment by Mitch — October 9, 2008 #
I see what you did there.
Comment by excimer — October 10, 2008 #
I don’t get it. If you divide everyone’s h value by the same constant, there is no change in ranking. It’s an irrelevant modification to h value then, because Zare is still higher than everyone, just by a slightly smaller margin.
Or is this just a joke?
Comment by charles — October 10, 2008 #
yes, that’s why it’s funny.
Comment by sam — October 11, 2008 #
…almost got me…
Comment by ZAL — October 12, 2008 #
[…] Check out my new measure, the h-bar index. | 5 Comments […]
Pingback by Everyday Scientist » h value — September 14, 2009 #