Harmonic publication and citation counting: sharing authorship credit equitably – not equally, geometrically or arithmetically

Nils T. Hagen ()
Additional contact information
Nils T. Hagen: Bodø University College

Scientometrics, 2010, vol. 84, issue 3, No 15, 785-793

Abstract: Abstract Bibliometric counting methods need to be validated against perceived notions of authorship credit allocation, and standardized by rejecting methods with poor fit or questionable ethical implications. Harmonic counting meets these concerns by exhibiting a robust fit to previously published empirical data from medicine, psychology and chemistry, and by complying with three basic ethical criteria for the equitable sharing of authorship credit. Harmonic counting can also incorporate additional byline information about equal contribution, or the elevated status of a corresponding last author. By contrast, several previously proposed counting schemes from the bibliometric literature including arithmetic, geometric and fractional counting, do not fit the empirical data as well and do not consistently meet the ethical criteria. In conclusion, harmonic counting would seem to provide unrivalled accuracy, fairness and flexibility to the long overdue task of standardizing bibliometric allocation of publication and citation credit.

Keywords: Bibliometry; Bibliometric counting; Validation; Counting bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-009-0129-4 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:84:y:2010:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-009-0129-4

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-009-0129-4

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 ().