Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T23:04:50.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Hirsch h Index in a Non-Mainstream Area: Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences in Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Miguel A. García-Pérez
Miguel A. García-Pérez*
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Miguel A. García-Pérez, Departamento de Metodología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 Madrid, (Spain). Phone: +34-913943061; Fax: +34-913943189; E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The h index has advantages over journal impact factors for assessing the research performance of individuals, and it is becoming a reference tool for career assessment that is starting to be considered by some agencies as an aid in decisions for promotion, allocation, and funding. The h index has been reported to have adequate properties as a measure of the research accomplishments of individuals in areas where h values are usually high (i.e., at or above 40), but some concerns have been raised that its validity in other non-mainstream research areas is suspect. This paper presents data from an exhaustive computation and analysis of h indices for 204 faculty members in the area of Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences in Spain, an area where h indices tend to be low worldwide. The results indicate that the h index is substantially increased by self-citations and that the average h of full professors is not meaningfully larger than the average h of associate professors. Other interesting relations between h indices and demographic and academic variables are described, including the gender and age bias of h. In this field, but perhaps also in other fields where the average h is low, little justification is found for the use of the h index as a fair measure of research performance that can aid in funding or promotion decisions.

Frente a los índices de impacto, el índice h tiene ventajas para la evaluación de la carrera investigadora de personas individuales, y se está estableciendo como un índice de referencia en ese ámbito que empieza a utilizarse en la toma de decisiones acerca de promoción académica y concesión de ayudas para investigación. El índice h ha mostrado tener características adecuadas para esos propósitos en áreas en que los valores del índice son generalmente altos (40 o más), pero se han expresado dudas sobre su validez en áreas de menor saliencia. Este trabajo presenta un análisis exhaustivo del índice h de 204 profesores funcionarios del área de Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento en España, un área en que el índice h suele tomar valores bajos mundialmente. Los resultados revelan que el índice h está significativamente inflado por autocitas, y que el índice h medio de los catedráticos del área no es sustancialmente superior al de los profesores titulares. El índice h también muestra otras relaciones interesantes con variables demográficas o académicas, incluyendo la presencia de sesgos ligados a la edad y el sexo. Todo esto sugiere que, en el área de Metodología pero quizá también en otras áreas, el uso del índice h en la toma de decisiones de promoción o financiación no está justificado.

Keywords

citation analysisself-citationsHirsch indexh indexbibliometric indicatorsanálisis de citasautocitasíndice de Hirschíndice hbibliometría
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 2009 , pp. 833 - 849
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Batista, P. D., Campiteli, M. G., Kinouchi, O., & Martinez, A. S. (2006). Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests? Scientometrics, 68, 179–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, K. J.& Mielke, P. W. Jr., (1986). R by C chi-square analyses with small expected cell frequencies. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 46, 169–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, K. J.& Mielke, P. W. Jr., (1988). Monte Carlo comparisons of the asymptotic chi-square and likelihood-ratio tests with the nonasymptotic chi-square test for sparse r × c tables. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 256–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bollen, J., Rodriguez, M. A., & van de Sompel, H. (2006). Journal status. Scientometrics, 69, 669–687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornmann, L.& Daniel, H.-D. (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work? Scientometrics, 65, 391–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brookfield, J. (2003). The system rewards a dishonest approach. Nature, 423, 480.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, N. L. (1999). On the trail of the prolific Dr Path. Nature, 398, 555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colquhoun, D. (2003). Challenging the tyranny of impact factors. Nature, 423, 479.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Falmagne, J.-C. (2005). Mathematical Psychology – A perspective. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 49, 436–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García-Pérez, M. A. (2000). Assessors' odd listings don't inspire confidence. Nature, 406, 343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
García-Pérez, M. A. (2001). The decade 1989–1998 in Spanish psychology: An analysis of re search in statistics, methodology, and psychometric theory. Spanish Journal of Psychology, 4, 111–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García-Pérez, M. A. (2008, July). The h index as a measure of research accomplishments in the field of Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences. Paper presented at the III European Congress of Methodology. Oviedo, Spain.Google Scholar
García-Pérez, M. A. (2009). A multidimensional extension to Hirsch's h index. Scientometrics, in press.Google Scholar
García-Pérez, M. A.& Núñez-Antón, V. (2009). Accuracy of power-divergence statistics for testing independence and homogeneity in two-way contingency tables. Communica tions in Statistics – Simulation and Computation, 38, 503–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, A. F.& Cai, L. (2007). Further evaluating the conditional decision rule for compar ing two independent means. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 60, 217–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 102, 16569–16572.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirsch, J. E. (2007). Does the h index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 104, 19193–19198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2008). Measuring co-authorship and networking-adjusted scientific impact. PLoS ONE, 3(7), e2778. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelly, C. D.& Jennions, M. D. (2006). The h index and career assessment by numbers. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 167–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, C. D.& Jennions, M. D. (2007). H-index: Age and sex make it unreliable. Nature, 449, 403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotiaho, J. S. (1999). Papers vanish in mis-citation black hole. Nature, 398, 19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotiaho, J. S., Tomkins, J. L., & Simmons, L. W. (1999). Unfamiliar citations breed mistakes. Nature, 400, 307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lehmann, S., Jackson, A. D., & Lautrup, B. E. (2007). Measures for measures. Nature, 444, 1003–1004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moed, H. F. (2002). The impact-factors debate: The ISI's uses and limits. Nature, 415, 731–732.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Musi-Lechuga, B., Olivas-Ávila, J. A., Portillo-Reyes, V., & Villalobos-Galvis, F. (2005). Producción de los profesores funcionarios de Psicología en España en artículos de revistas con factor de impacto en la Web of Science. Psicothema, 17, 539–548.Google Scholar
Nature (2005a). Not-so-deep impact [Editorial]. Nature, 435, 1003–1004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nature (2005b). Ratings games [Editorial]. Nature, 436, 889–890.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, N. C. (1998). What's in a name (or a number or a date)? Nature, 395, 538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics, 67, 491–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez Navarro, A.& Imperial Ródenas, J. (2007). Índice h. Guía Para la Evaluación de la Investigación Española en Ciencia y Tecnología Utilizando el Índice h. Madrid: Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid. Electronic document available at http://www.madrimasd.org/informacionidi/biblioteca/publicacion/doc/33_indiceh.zipGoogle Scholar
Salgado, J. F.& Páez, D. (2007). La productividad científica y el índice h de Hirchs [sic] de la psicología social española: Convergencia entre indicadores de productividad y comparación con otras áreas. Psicothema, 19, 179–189.Google Scholar
Schreiber, M. (2007). A case study of the Hirsch index for 26 non-prominent physicists. Annalen der Physik, 16, 640–652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. British Medical Journal, 314, 498–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidiropoulos, A., Katsaros, D., & Manolopoulos, Y. (2007). Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks. Scientometrics, 72, 253–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taber, D. F. (2005). Quantifying publication impact. Science, 309, 2166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Todd, P. A.& Ladle, R. J. (2008). Citations: Poor practices by authors reduce their value. Nature, 451, 244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vinkler, P. (2007). Eminence of scientists in the light of the h-index and other scientometric indicators. Journal of Information Science, 33, 481–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waheed, A. A. (2003). Citation rate unrelated to journals' impact factors. Nature, 426, 495.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wendl, M. C. (2007). H-index: However ranked, citations need context. Nature, 449, 403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yellott, J. I. Jr., (1969). Probability learning with noncontingent success. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6, 541–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, D. W. (2004). A note on preliminary tests of equality of variances. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 57, 173–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed