How to Count Citations If You Must

Motty Perry and Philip Reny ()

American Economic Review, 2016, vol. 106, issue 9, 2722-41

Abstract: Citation indices are regularly used to inform critical decisions about promotion, tenure, and the allocation of billions of research dollars. Nevertheless, most indices (e.g., the h-index) are motivated by intuition and rules of thumb, resulting in undesirable conclusions. In contrast, five natural properties lead us to a unique new index, the Euclidean index, that avoids several shortcomings of the h-index and its successors. The Euclidean index is simply the Euclidean length of an individual's citation list. Two empirical tests suggest that the Euclidean index outperforms the h-index in practice.

JEL-codes: A14 C43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20140850
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

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Working Paper: How To Count Citations If You Must (2015)
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