Abstract
The characteristics of the h-index in the field of condensed matter physics are studied using high-quality data from ResearcherID. The results are examined in terms of theoretical descriptions of the h-index’ overall dependence on a researcher’s total number of published papers, and total number of citations. In particular, the models by Hirsch, Egghe and Rousseau, as well as by Glänzel and Schubert are examined. Special emphasis is placed on the deviations from such statistical descriptions, and it is argued that the deviation of a particular researcher’s h value from the Egghe–Rousseau model’s prediction can be used as a supplementary measure of impact. A corresponding analysis with similar results is performed using the multi-author hm-index.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
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, 3(4), 273–289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2009.04.001.
Batista, P. D., Campiteli, M. G., & Kinouchi, O. (2006). Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests? Scientometrics, 68(1), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0090-4.
Bohannon, J. (2014). Google scholar wins raves—but can it be trusted? Science, 343(6166), 14–14. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.343.6166.14.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2007). What do we know about the h index? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(9), 1381–1385. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20609.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2008). The state of h index research. Is the h index the ideal way to measure research performance? EMBO Reports, 10(1), 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2008.233.
Bornmann, L., & Mutz, R. (2015). Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(11), 2215–2222. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23329.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., Hug, S. E., & Daniel, H.-D. (2011). A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants. Journal of Informetrics, 5(3), 346–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2011.01.006.
Braun, T., Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2006). A Hirsch-type index for journals. Scientometrics, 69(1), 169–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0147-4.
Csajbók, E., Berhidi, A., Vasas, L., & Schubert, A. (2007). Hirsch-index for countries based on essential science indicators data. Scientometrics, 73(1), 91–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1859-9.
Dienes, K. R. (2015). Completing h. Journal of Informetrics, 9(2), 385–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2015.01.003.
Egghe, L. (2007). Untangling Herdan’s law and Heaps’ law: Mathematical and informetric arguments. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(5), 702–709. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20524.
Egghe, L. (2008). Mathematical theory of the h- and g-index in case of fractional counting of authorship. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(10), 1608–1616. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20845.
Egghe, L. (2010). The Hirsch index and related impact measures. Annual Review of Information Science and Technologz, 44, 65–114. https://doi.org/10.1002/aris.2010.1440440109.
Egghe, L., & Rousseau, R. (2006). An informetric model for the Hirsch-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 121–129. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0143-8.
Galam, S. (2011). Tailor based allocations for multiple authorship: A fractional gh-index. Scientometrics, 89(1), 365–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0447-1.
Glänzel, W. (2006). On the h-index: A mathematical approach to a new measure of publication activity and citation impact. Scientometrics, 67(2), 315–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0102-4.
Halevi, G., Moed, H., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2017). Suitability of google scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 11(3), 823–834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.06.005.
Hirsch, J. E. (2018). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific leadership. arXiv:1810.01605.
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569–16572. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102.
Iñigo, J., Palma, J.-A., Iriarte, J., & Urrestarazu, E. (2012). Evolution of the publications in clinical neurology: Scientific impact of different countries during the 2000–2009 period. Scientometrics, 95(3), 941–952. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0880-9.
Jasco, P. (2005). As we may search—Comparison of major features of the web of science, scopus, and google scholar citation-based and citation-enhanced databases. Current Science, 89, 1537.
Larsen, P. O., & von Ins, M. (2010). The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by science citation index. Scientometrics, 84(3), 575–603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0202-z.
Lehmann, S., Jackson, A. D., & Lautrup, B. E. (2006). Measures for measures. Nature, 444(7122), 1003–1004. https://doi.org/10.1038/4441003a.
Prathap, G. (2010). Is there a place for a mock h-index? Scientometrics, 84(1), 153–165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0066-2.
Radicchi, F., & Castellano, C. (2013). Analysis of bibliometric indicators for individual scholars in a large data set. Scientometrics, 97(3), 627–637. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1027-3.
Radicchi, F., Fortunato, S., & Castellano, C. (2008). Universality of citation distributions: Toward an objective measure of scientific impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(45), 17268–17272. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0806977105.
Redner, S. (2010). On the meaning of the h-index. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/2010/03/L03005.
Schreiber, M. (2008a). To share the fame in a fair way, \(h_m\) modifies h for multi-authored manuscripts. New Journal of Physics, 10(4), 040201. https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/10/4/040201.
Schreiber, M. (2008b). A modification of the h-index: The \(h_m\)-index accounts for multi-authored manuscripts. Journal of Informetrics, 2(3), 211–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2008.05.001.
Schreiber, M. (2009). A case study of the modified hirsch index \(h_m\) accounting for multiple coauthors. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(6), 1274–1282. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21057.
Schubert, A., & Glänzel, W. (2007). A systematic analysis of Hirsch-type indices for journals. Journal of Informetrics, 1(3), 179–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2006.12.002.
Shultz, M. (2007). Comparing test searches in pubmed and google scholar. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 95(4), 442–445. https://doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.95.4.442.
Sidiropoulos, A., Katsaros, D., & Manolopoulos, Y. (2007). Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks. Scientometrics, 72(2), 253–280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1722-z.
Sinatra, R., Deville, P., Szell, M., Wang, D., & Barabási, A.-L. (2015). A century of physics. Nature Physics, 11(10), 791–796. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3494.
Spruit, H. C. (2012). The relative significance of the H-index. arXiv e-prints.
Sweileh, W. M. (2017). Global research trends of world health organization’s top eight emerging pathogens. Globalization and Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-017-0233-9.
Tscharntke, T., Hochberg, M. E., Rand, T. A., Resh, V. H., & Krauss, J. (2007). Author sequence and credit for contributions in multiauthored publications. PLoS Biology, 5(1), e18. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0050018.
van Raan, A. F. J. (1996). Advanced bibliometric methods as quantitative core of peer review based evaluation and foresight exercises. Scientometrics, 36(3), 397–420. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02129602.
van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Comparison of the hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics, 67(3), 491–502. https://doi.org/10.1556/Scient.67.2006.3.10.
Vavryčuk, V. (2018). Fair ranking of researchers and research teams. PLoS ONE, 13(4), e0195509. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195509.
Waltman, L. (2016). A review of the literature on citation impact indicators. Journal of Informetrics, 10(2), 365–391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2016.02.007.
Wuchty, S., Jones, B. F., & Uzzi, B. (2007). The increasing dominance of teams in production of knowledge. Science, 316(5827), 1036–1039. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099.
Ye, F. Y. (2011). A unification of three models for the h-index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 205–207. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21456.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge inspiring discussions with Lars H. Andersen. The work was supported by VILLUM FONDEN via the center of Excellence for Dirac Materials (Grant No. 11744).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tietze, A., Hofmann, P. The h-index and multi-author hm-index for individual researchers in condensed matter physics. Scientometrics 119, 171–185 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03051-w
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03051-w