Three dimensions of scientific impact

Grzegorz Siudem (), Barbara Żogała-Siudem, Anna Cena and Marek Gagolewski
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Grzegorz Siudem: Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland
Barbara Żogała-Siudem: Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland
Anna Cena: Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland
Marek Gagolewski: Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland; Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland; School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, vol. 117, issue 25, 13896-13900

Abstract: The growing popularity of bibliometric indexes (whose most famous example is the h index by J. E. Hirsch [J. E. Hirsch, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102, 16569–16572 (2005)]) is opposed by those claiming that one’s scientific impact cannot be reduced to a single number. Some even believe that our complex reality fails to submit to any quantitative description. We argue that neither of the two controversial extremes is true. By assuming that some citations are distributed according to the rich get richer rule (success breeds success, preferential attachment) while some others are assigned totally at random (all in all, a paper needs a bibliography), we have crafted a model that accurately summarizes citation records with merely three easily interpretable parameters: productivity, total impact, and how lucky an author has been so far.

Keywords: science of science; scientometrics; bibliometric indexes; rich get richer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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