The H-index paradox: your coauthors have a higher H-index than you do

Fabrício Benevenuto (), Alberto H. F. Laender () and Bruno L. Alves ()
Additional contact information
Fabrício Benevenuto: Federal University of Minas Gerais
Alberto H. F. Laender: Federal University of Minas Gerais
Bruno L. Alves: Federal University of Minas Gerais

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 106, issue 1, No 27, 469-474

Abstract: Abstract One interesting phenomenon that emerges from the typical structure of social networks is the friendship paradox. It states that your friends have on average more friends than you do. Recent efforts have explored variations of it, with numerous implications for the dynamics of social networks. However, the friendship paradox and its variations consider only the topological structure of the networks and neglect many other characteristics that are correlated with node degree. In this article, we take the case of scientific collaborations to investigate whether a similar paradox also arises in terms of a researcher’s scientific productivity as measured by her H-index. The H-index is a widely used metric in academia to capture both the quality and the quantity of a researcher’s scientific output. It is likely that a researcher may use her coauthors’ H-indexes as a way to infer whether her own H-index is adequate in her research area. Nevertheless, in this article, we show that the average H-index of a researcher’s coauthors is usually higher than her own H-index. We present empirical evidence of this paradox and discuss some of its potential consequences.

Keywords: H-index; H-index paradox; Scientific collaborations; Scientific communities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-015-1776-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:106:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-015-1776-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-015-1776-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().