Further characterizations of the Hirsch index

Antonio Quesada

Scientometrics, 2011, vol. 87, issue 1, No 8, 107-114

Abstract: Abstract The Hirsch index is a number that synthesizes a researcher’s output. It is defined as the maximum number h such that the researcher has h papers with at least h citations each. Four characterizations of the Hirsch index are suggested. The most compact one relies on the interpretation of the index as providing the number of valuable papers in an output and postulates three axioms. One, only cited papers can be valuable. Two, the index is strongly monotonic: if output x has more papers than output y and each paper in x has more citations than the most cited paper in y, then x has more valuable papers than y. And three, the minimum amount of citations under which a paper becomes valuable is different for each paper.

Keywords: Hirsch index; Axiomatic characterization; Publications; Citations; Scientific productivity index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-010-0307-4 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:87:y:2011:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-010-0307-4

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0307-4

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 ().