The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.

The impact of individual scientists is commonly quantified using citation-based measures. The most common such measure is the h-index. A scientist's h-index affects hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, and thus shapes the progress of science. Here we report a large-scale study of scientome...

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Autores principales:	Vladlen Koltun, David Hafner
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/55b764b60d7a4482bb2aa026f4049d30
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:55b764b60d7a4482bb2aa026f4049d302021-12-02T20:09:54ZThe h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0253397https://doaj.org/article/55b764b60d7a4482bb2aa026f4049d302021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253397https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The impact of individual scientists is commonly quantified using citation-based measures. The most common such measure is the h-index. A scientist's h-index affects hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, and thus shapes the progress of science. Here we report a large-scale study of scientometric measures, analyzing millions of articles and hundreds of millions of citations across four scientific fields and two data platforms. We find that the correlation of the h-index with awards that indicate recognition by the scientific community has substantially declined. These trends are associated with changing authorship patterns. We show that these declines can be mitigated by fractional allocation of citations among authors, which has been discussed in the literature but not implemented at scale. We find that a fractional analogue of the h-index outperforms other measures as a correlate and predictor of scientific awards. Our results suggest that the use of the h-index in ranking scientists should be reconsidered, and that fractional allocation measures such as h-frac provide more robust alternatives.Vladlen KoltunDavid HafnerPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 6, p e0253397 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Vladlen Koltun David Hafner The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
description	The impact of individual scientists is commonly quantified using citation-based measures. The most common such measure is the h-index. A scientist's h-index affects hiring, promotion, and funding decisions, and thus shapes the progress of science. Here we report a large-scale study of scientometric measures, analyzing millions of articles and hundreds of millions of citations across four scientific fields and two data platforms. We find that the correlation of the h-index with awards that indicate recognition by the scientific community has substantially declined. These trends are associated with changing authorship patterns. We show that these declines can be mitigated by fractional allocation of citations among authors, which has been discussed in the literature but not implemented at scale. We find that a fractional analogue of the h-index outperforms other measures as a correlate and predictor of scientific awards. Our results suggest that the use of the h-index in ranking scientists should be reconsidered, and that fractional allocation measures such as h-frac provide more robust alternatives.
format	article
author	Vladlen Koltun David Hafner
author_facet	Vladlen Koltun David Hafner
author_sort	Vladlen Koltun
title	The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
title_short	The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
title_full	The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
title_fullStr	The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
title_full_unstemmed	The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
title_sort	h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/55b764b60d7a4482bb2aa026f4049d30
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The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation.

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