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Scopus to incorporate h-index

Scopus, the abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources, will incorporate the h-index soon. The h-index considers the publication records of an individual, the number of papers published over n years and the number of citations for each paper. The result is a single number, the h-index. To provide the user with additional clarity Scopus sys it will include visual aids that present a transparent overview of citation and publication patterns over time, revealing whether the h-index is dependent on a few highly cited papers or that the author’s papers have a relatively consistent volume of citations.
See here for a recent Nature Commentary on the h-index; and see here for a 2005 Nature news story "Index aims for fair ranking of scientists".

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 01, 2007
Categories: Citation analysis, Quality measures | | Comments (2)

Comments

A-index

After h-index is calculated multiplay it by the average number of citation of the papers contributing to h-index, and than take square root. This gives area based(A-index) of the h-index citation field. This removes problem that h-index of N can not distiquish is it N-times N-citations (the weakest posible case)or N-times of citations that are much larger than N. For instance h-index of 5 one can get by citations: 5 5 5 5 5, but also by citations: 50 5 5 5 5. A-indeks in this two cases is 5 and 8.4 respectively. Such an idex will put science genius (milestone discovery) back to the top.

Nenad Juranic, Ph.D

Posted by: Nenad Juranic, Ph.D. | August 8, 2007 11:13 PM

h-index is clearly flawed in not accounting for the contribution a particular author makes - clearly, a single author has written the whole paper, whereas the 20th of 50 has only made a minor contribution.

Widespread adoption of h-index as a measure will encourage widespread "honorary" co-authorship and blurring of responsibility for the paper, directly contrary to Nature's admirable policy of encouraging a direct statement of author responsibility.

h-index would be clearly improved by adjusting for the number (and ranking) of authors. Even 10 years ago, an assessment of "percentage contribution" was used by NERC, and probably other agencies, to measure output. h-index has some attractive features but in this respect is a retrograde step.

Posted by: James Annan | August 26, 2007 09:58 PM

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