Petersen, Alexander M. and Succi, Sauro The Z-index: A geometric representation of productivity and impact which accounts for information in the entire rank-citation profile. Journal of Informetrics, 7 (4). pp. 823-832. (2013)
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Abstract
We present a simple generalization of Hirsch's h-index, Z \equiv \sqrt{h^{2}+C}/\sqrt 5, where C is the total number of citations. Z is aimed at correcting the potentially excessive penalty made by h on a scientist's highly cited papers, because for the majority of scientists analyzed, we find the excess citation fraction (C-h^{2})/C to be distributed closely around the value 0.75, meaning that 75 percent of the author's impact is neglected. Additionally, Z is less sensitive to local changes in a scientist's citation profile, namely perturbations which increase h while only marginally affecting C. Using real career data for 476 physicists careers and 488 biologist careers, we analyze both the distribution of Z and the rank stability of Z with respect to the Hirsch index h and the Egghe index g. We analyze careers distributed across a wide range of total impact, including top-cited physicists and biologists for benchmark comparison. In practice, the Z-index requires the same information needed to calculate h and could be effortlessly incorporated within career profile databases, such as Google Scholar and ResearcherID. Because Z incorporates information from the entire publication profile while being more robust than h and g to local perturbations, we argue that Z is better suited for ranking comparisons in academic decision-making scenarios comprising a large number of scientists.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Identification Number: | doi:10.1016/j.joi.2013.07.003 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Science of science; Citation impact; Rank stability; h-Index |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HA Statistics Q Science > Q Science (General) Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science |
| Research Area: | Economics and Institutional Change |
| Depositing User: | Alexander Petersen |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Nov 2014 08:25 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Nov 2014 08:25 |
| URI: | http://eprints.imtlucca.it/id/eprint/2376 |
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