OF THE H-INDEX AND ITS ALTERNATIVES: AN APPLICATION TO THE 100 MOST PROLIFIC ECONOMISTS

Richard Tol

No FNU-146, Working Papers from Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University

Abstract: The h-index is a recent but already quite popular way of measuring research quality and quantity. However, it discounts highly-cited papers. The g-index corrects for this, but it is sensitivity to the number of never-cited papers. Besides, h- or g-index-based rankings have a large number of ties. Therefore, this paper introduces two new indices, and tests their performance for the 100 most prolific economists. A researcher has a t-number (f-number) of t (f) if t (f) is the largest number for which it holds that she has t (f) publications for which the geometric (harmonic) average number of citations is at least t (f). The new indices overcome the shortcomings of the old indices.

Keywords: rankings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2007-09, Revised 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Forthcoming, Scientometrics

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Related works:
Journal Article: The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sgc:wpaper:146

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