Asymptotics for the Hirsch Index

J. Beirlant and John Einmahl

No 2007-86, Discussion Paper from Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research

Abstract: The last decade methods for quantifying the research output of individual researchers have become quite popular in academic policy making. The h- index (Hirsch, 2005) constitutes an interesting quality measure that has attracted a lot of attention recently. It is now a standard measure available for instance on theWeb of Science. In this paper we establish the asymptotic normality of the empirical h-index. The rate of convergence is non-standard: ph=(1 + nf(h)), where f is the density of the citation distribution and n the number of publications of a researcher. In case that the citations follow a Pareto-type or a Weibull-type distribution as defined in extreme value theory, our general result nicely specializes to results that are useful for constructing confidence intervals for the h-index.

JEL-codes: C13 C14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-sog
Date: 2007
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=65780 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dgr:kubcen:200786

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper from Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research
Series data maintained by Corry Stuyts ().