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Investigates whether there is a need for the h index and its variants in addition to standard bibliometric measures (SBMs). One type of index (eg, h-index) describes the most productive core of a scientist’s output and tells of the number of papers in the core; the other (eg, a-index) depicts the impact of the papers in the core. In evaluative bibliometric studies, quantity and quality of output are usually assessed using the SBMs “number of publications” (for quantity) and “total citation counts” (for the impact dimension). The authors included the SBMs into the factor analysis. The results of the newly calculated analysis indicate that there is a high intercorrelation between “number of publications” and the indices that load substantially on the factor Quantity of the Productive Core as well as between “total citation counts” and the indices that load substantially on the factor Impact of the Productive Core. The authors propose the use of any pair of indicators (one relating to the number of papers in a researcher’s productive core and one relating to the impact of these core papers) as a meaningful approach for comparing scientists. Bourne PE, Fink JL. I am not a scientist, I am a number. PLoS Computational Biology 2008;4(12): e1000247. www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000247 Having scholarly output properly characterized is not out of reach, since articles are already identified uniquely by a Digital Object Identifier, books or journals by an ISBN, citations by PubMed identifiers. The ideas discussed here take this identification process for individual publications and citations to the point of providing unique descriptors for each author and uniquely identifying all of each author’s scholarly work. Fanelli D. How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. PLoS ONE 2009;4(5):e5738. www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738 Many surveys have asked scientists directly whether they have committed or know of a colleague who fabricated and falsified data or committed other forms of research misconduct, but their results appeared difficult to compare and synthesize. This is the first meta-analysis of these surveys. Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct. Fersht A. The most influential journals: impact factor and eigenfactor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2009;106(17):6883–6884. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903307106 www.pnas.org/content/106/17/6883.full To rate the influence of journals a new bibliometric parameter, the Eigenfactor (www.eigenfactor.org), has recently been created and is now listed by Journal Citation Reports. The Eigenfactor ranks journals in a manner similar to that used by Google for ranking the importance of websites in a search. Practically, there is a strong correlation between Eigenfactors and the total number of citations received by a journal. New and emerging measures of scientific impact are continuously developed and improved. However, scientists should not rely solely on one standard measure. After all, science is about progress, which is ultimately assessed by human judgment. Iribarren-Maestro I, Lascurain-Sánchez ML, Sanz-Casado E. Are multi-authorship and visibility related? Study of ten research areas at Carlos III University of Madrid. Scientometrics 2009;79(1):191–200. doi: 10.1007/s11192-009-0412-4 Opinions on the possible relationship between co-authorship and number of citations vary. This study shows that while multi-institutional and multi-national authorship raise the number of citations, co-authorship and number of citations are unrelated. Correspondence analysis failed to show any correlation between the quartile of the citing journal and multi-institutional or multinational authorship, but did reveal a relationship between citing journal quartile and departmental area. Johnston R. The extent of influence: an alternative approach to identifying dominant contributors to a discipline’s literature. Scientometrics 2009;78(3):409–420. doi: 10.1007/s11192-007-2015-2 Most studies of scholarly influence within disciplines using citation data do not investigate the extent of an individual’s influence. Using bibliographic data from a series of quadrennial reports into developments in UK geography, this paper finds that few authors are cited on more than one occasion. Sypsa V, Hatzakis A. Assessing the impact of biomedical research in academic institutions of disparate sizes. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2009;9:33. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-9-33 www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/9/33 A valid and transparent evaluation of universities is increasingly needed but continues to be a controversial issue. In particular, as regards the assessment of biomedical research, peer-review is not adequate for large-scale evaluations and the authors propose, beyond the usual bibliometric indicators, a new impact measure: the Modified Impact Index (MII). This indicator is suitable for large as well as for small field specific publication sets in biomedicine and should be used together with the h-index when research output of institutions of disparate sizes is compared. Van den Besselaar P, Leydesdorff L. Past performance, peer review, and project selection: A case study in the social and behavioral sciences. Sigmetrics 2009. http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/p.a.a.vandenbesselaar/bestanden/20090327%20magw.pdf Do grant allocation decisions correlate with past performance of the applicants in terms of publications and citations? The findings of the Netherlands Research Council for the Economic and Social Sciences distinguish grant applicants with above-average performance from those with below-average performance, but within the former group no correlation could be found between past performance and receiving a grant. Researchers who were denied funding significantly outperformed those who were funded, and the best rejected proposals scored as high on the outcomes of the peer review process as the accepted proposals. (SIGMETRICS is a listserve that covers bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and metrics as related to the design and operation of digital libraries and other information systems. It is a Virtual Special Interest Group of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.) Williamson JR. My h-index turns 40: My midlife crisis of impact. ACS Chemical Biology 2009;4(5):311–313. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/cb9001014?cookieSet=1 The h-index, or Hirsch index, is a sort of personal impact factor, based on citations of published work. In this letter the author tells about his recent discover in the web of science on how to “Create Citation Report” through the “Author Finder”. Then he goes on to advise how to boost the h-index. © Copyright 2009 by European Association of Science Editors Top of Page |
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