Future publication success in science is better predicted by traditional measures than by the h index

Johannes Hönekopp () and Julie Khan
Additional contact information
Johannes Hönekopp: Northumbria University
Julie Khan: Northumbria University

Scientometrics, 2012, vol. 90, issue 3, No 6, 843-853

Abstract: Abstract Although the use of bibliometric indicators for evaluations in science is becoming more and more ubiquitous, little is known about how future publication success can be predicted from past publication success. Here, we investigated how the post-2000 publication success of 85 researchers in oncology could be predicted from their previous publication record. Our main findings are: (i) Rates of past achievement were better predictors than measures of cumulative achievement. (ii) A combination of authors’ past productivity and the past citation rate of their average paper was most successful in predicting future publication success (R 2 ≈ 0.60). (iii) This combination of traditional bibliographic indicators clearly outperformed predictions based on the rate of the h index (R 2 between 0.37 and 0.52). We discuss implications of our findings for views on creativity and for science evaluation.

Keywords: Science; Evaluation; Creativity; Bibliometry; h index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-011-0551-2 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:90:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-011-0551-2

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-011-0551-2

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 ().