Abstract
The h-index has captured the imagination of scientometricians and bibliometricians to such an extent that one can now divide the history of the subject virtually into a pre-Hirsch and a post-Hirsch period. Beyond its academic value, it is now used as a tool for research assessment of individuals, research faculties and institutions and even for comparing performance of journals and countries. Since its introduction, many Hirsch-type variants have been proposed to overcome perceived limitations of the original index. In this paper, using ideas from mathematical modeling, another mock h-index is proposed which may complement the h-index and give it better resolving power.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work? Scientometrics, 65, 391–392.
Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H.-D. (2008). Der h-index-das Mass aller Dinge? Der aktuelle Stand der h-Index-Forschung. Forschung uber Forschung, 2, 38–43.
Csajbók, E., Berhidi, A., Vasas, L., & Schubert, A. (2007). Hirsch-index for countries based on essential science indicators data. Scientometrics, 73, 91.
García-Pérez, M. A. (2009), A multidimensional extension to Hirsch’s h-index. Scientometrics. doi: 10.1007/s11192-009-2290-1.
Glänzel, W. (2008), On some new bibliometric applications of statistics related to the h-index. OR 0801, KU Leuven.
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 102: 16569–16572.
Hirsch, J. E. (2007). Does the h index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 104: 19193–19198.
Lindsey, D. (1978). The scientific publication system in social science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Liu, Y., & Rousseau, R. (2009). Properties of Hirsch-type indices: the case of library classification categories. Scientometrics, 79(2), 235–248.
Prathap, G. (2006). Hirsch-type indices for ranking institutions’ scientific research output. Current Science, 91(11), 10.
Schubert, A. (2007). Successive h-indices. Scientometrics, 70, 201–205.
Schubert, A., & Glänzel, W. (2007). A systematic analysis of Hirsch-type indices for journals. Journal of Informetrics, 1, 179.
White, H. D., & Mccain, K. W. (1998). Visualizing a discipline: An author co-citation analysis of information science, 1972–1995. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(4), 327–355.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Prathap, G. Is there a place for a mock h-index?. Scientometrics 84, 153–165 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0066-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0066-2