Evaluation of the Scientific Outputs of Researchers with Similar H Index: a Critical Approach

Abstract

Background and Purpose:h-index has been always reviewed as one of the most useful criteria for evaluating the scientific outputs of researchers by the sciencometric experts. In this study, the h-index of 40 Iranian researchers accompanied with its relationship to assessment criteria of scientific outputs such as the number of articles, scientific age, number of citations and self-citation were reviewed.Materials and Methods:The first part of this study was related to the literature review. But the information of 40 Iranian researchers’ Citation Reports was observational extracted from WOS database and the Pearson correlation coefficient test was used to answer the research hypothesesResults:Citation analysis showed that 40 selected researchers published 877 articles in web of science up to 9 January 2013. These articles have been cited 3858 time. The average of their h-index was estimated 38.5 ±12.12 Correlation coefficient test showed that there was a significant and direct relationship between the h-index and the number of papers, the number of citations and self-citation (Sig>0.05) but there was no significant relationship between scientific age and h-index (Sig> 0.05).Conclusions:Analysis of the data showed that the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the researchers with the same h-index had considerable differences. Therefore, only the h-index should not be a criterion for scientific ranking of the researchers and other complementary indexes such as M parameter and G index along with h-index must be used to be able to more accurately determine the degree of scientific influence of the researchers with the same h.

Does the Hirsch Index Improve Research Quality in the Field of Biomaterials? A New Perspective in the Biomedical Research Field

“…The h-index is easy to understand and can be easily gained by anyone with access to the Thomson ISI Web of Science [ 22 ]. Actually, the h-index has been reviewed as one of the most reliable criteria for evaluating the scientific outputs of researchers [ 23 ]. This index has many flaws: the articles with citations less than the h-index value are excluded from the calculation.…”

“…This index has many flaws: the articles with citations less than the h-index value are excluded from the calculation. The number of citations is influenced by self-citations and colleague citations, meaning that its value can be increased by recommendation to friends and colleagues [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. There are many circumstances where the h-index provides misleading information on the impact of an author.…”

Self-citation of Medical and Non-medical Universities in Northern Iran

“…However, some quantitative indicators are used for measuring the self-citation rate (6). In spite of the lack of consensus on the acceptable rate of self-citation, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) conceives the self-citation rate less than 20% as an acceptable rate and does not assign any impact factor for a journal with the self-citation rate more than 20% (7).…”

The Congress Impact Factor: A proposal from board members of the World Society of Emergency Surgeons.it (WSES) and Academy of Emergency Medicine and Care (AcEMC)

“…Because of these limitations several attempts have been made to improve the H-index trying to take into account the contribution of that author to the paper or the period of activity of the researcher adjusting for the number of years since the first publication. Nonetheless, there still is no perfect index to measure the quality and quantity of research which may be affected by so many factors 1 - 4 . In fact, some researchers that have deeply impacted the world of science do not have impressive H-index 2 , 3 .…”