A novel bibliometric index with a simple geometric interpretation

Trevor Fenner, Martyn Harris, Mark Levene and Judit Bar-Ilan

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: We propose the χ-index as a bibliometric indicator that generalises the h-index. While the h-index is determined by the maximum square that fits under the citation curve of an author when plotting the number of citations in decreasing order, the χ-index is determined by the maximum area rectangle that fits under the curve. The height of the maximum rectangle is the number of citations ck to the kth most-cited publication, where k is the width of the rectangle. The χ-index is then defined as k c k, for convenience of comparison with the h-index and other similar indices. We present a comprehensive empirical comparison between the χ-index and other bibliometric indices, focusing on a comparison with the h-index, by analysing two datasets—a large set of Google Scholar profiles and a small set of Nobel prize winners. Our results show that, although the χ and h indices are strongly correlated, they do exhibit significant differences. In particular, we show that, for these data sets, there are a substantial number of profiles for which χ is significantly larger than h. Furthermore, restricting these profiles to the cases when ck > k or ck

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0200098

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200098

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