The o-index
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This lead to some mistrust in Scholar that has a tendency to inflate one's citation records (possibly people like it for this reason as well). The Dorogovtsev & Mendes' paper used the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (Core Collection) database. It is not free of access and even when you get through some painful institution access, you have to struggle with a painful interface. A selection of important scientists was emphasized. I am comparing below the Author's results with those obtained through Scholar, where one finds most of the selected researchers (still missing are Ernzerhof, Car, Hopfield, Higgs, Kasteleyn, Fortuin, Gossard, Anderson, Novoselov, Geim). The others, who are not all equally famous, are readily located on the web. For the record, this is a snapshot at the time of writing: | This lead to some mistrust in Scholar that has a tendency to inflate one's citation records (possibly people like it for this reason as well). The Dorogovtsev & Mendes' paper used the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (Core Collection) database. It is not free of access and even when you get through some painful institution access, you have to struggle with a painful interface. A selection of important scientists was emphasized. I am comparing below the Author's results with those obtained through Scholar, where one finds most of the selected researchers (still missing are Ernzerhof, Car, Hopfield, Higgs, Kasteleyn, Fortuin, Gossard, Anderson, Novoselov, Geim). The others, who are not all equally famous, are readily located on the web. For the record, this is a snapshot at the time of writing: | ||
| − | <center><wz tip="The lead scientist selected for the o-index study who have a profile on Scholar.">[[File:ho-scientists.jpg|750px]]</wz></center> | + | <center><wz tip="The lead scientist selected for the o-index study who have a profile on Scholar. Click to open in its own window (right for a new one).">[[File:ho-scientists.jpg|750px|link=http://laussy.org/images/3/37/Ho-scientists.jpg]]</wz></center> |
Even for these highly visible scientists, some problems are readily apparent. For instance, there are two accounts for [http://dft.uci.edu/ Kieron Burke], both from the scientist in person apparently, which is a strange tolerance as it seems quite straightforward to check. They differ slightly in o-index, with baby-Burke having 1861 ($h$-index 48) and the account below 1827 ($h$ 49). | Even for these highly visible scientists, some problems are readily apparent. For instance, there are two accounts for [http://dft.uci.edu/ Kieron Burke], both from the scientist in person apparently, which is a strange tolerance as it seems quite straightforward to check. They differ slightly in o-index, with baby-Burke having 1861 ($h$-index 48) and the account below 1827 ($h$ 49). | ||
<center><wz tip="The two Burke accounts on Scholar.">[[File:two-burke.png|320px]]</wz></center> | <center><wz tip="The two Burke accounts on Scholar.">[[File:two-burke.png|320px]]</wz></center> | ||
Revision as of 10:11, 5 November 2015
A paper by Dorogovtsev & Mendes in Nature Physics [1] replaces the $h$-index metric (at least $h$ papers cited $h$ times) by the $o$-index, that measures a scientist impact and productivity through their $\sqrt{hm}$ with $m$ the number of citations to their most quoted paper.
It is an interesting variation in the already large family of Author-level metrics, in particular because it is so easy to compute. It is certainly one important attribute of such metrics that one should be able to compute his score immediately (my $o$-index at the time of writing is $o=\sqrt{390\times 21}=90.5$ according to Google scholar). Time will show if this proposal will catch-up, although the $h$-metric has proved very popular and enduring.
Since it is so conveniently computed, it is also interesting to see how various databases compare. The already mentioned Google Scholar has several benefits: it is free of access and it is quite dynamic (including rather quickly papers just put on the arXiv, for instance). Disadvantages include unreliability in some cases, e.g., Hawking's most quoted paper is actually from Weinberg:
This lead to some mistrust in Scholar that has a tendency to inflate one's citation records (possibly people like it for this reason as well). The Dorogovtsev & Mendes' paper used the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (Core Collection) database. It is not free of access and even when you get through some painful institution access, you have to struggle with a painful interface. A selection of important scientists was emphasized. I am comparing below the Author's results with those obtained through Scholar, where one finds most of the selected researchers (still missing are Ernzerhof, Car, Hopfield, Higgs, Kasteleyn, Fortuin, Gossard, Anderson, Novoselov, Geim). The others, who are not all equally famous, are readily located on the web. For the record, this is a snapshot at the time of writing:
Even for these highly visible scientists, some problems are readily apparent. For instance, there are two accounts for Kieron Burke, both from the scientist in person apparently, which is a strange tolerance as it seems quite straightforward to check. They differ slightly in o-index, with baby-Burke having 1861 ($h$-index 48) and the account below 1827 ($h$ 49).
