2012/07/06 by Marcel Ausloos, Ausloos, Marcel · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Business Strategy and Innovation #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1207.1614
openalex publication_date 2012/07/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Rather than "measuring" a scientist impact through the number of citations\nwhich his/her published work can have generated, isn't it more appropriate to\nconsider his/her value through his/her scientific network performance\nillustrated by his/her co-author role, thus focussing on his/her joint\npublications, - and their impact through citations? Whence, on one hand, this\npaper very briefly examines bibliometric laws, like the h-index and\nsubsequent debate about co-authorship effects, but on the other hand, proposes\na measure of collaborative work through a new index. Based on data about the\npublication output of a specific research group, a new bibliometric law is\nfound.\n Let a co-author C have written J (joint) publications with one or several\ncolleagues. Rank all the co-authors of that individual according to their\nnumber of joint publications, giving a rank r to each co-author, starting\nwith r=1 for the most prolific.\n It is empirically found that a very simple relationship holds between the\nnumber of joint publications J by coauthors and their rank of importance,\ni.e. J \∝ 1/r. Thereafter, in the same spirit as for the Hirsch core,\none can define a "co-author core", and introduce indices operating on an\nauthor. It is emphasized that the new index has a quite different\n(philosophical) perspective that the h-index. In the present case, one\nfocusses on "relevant" persons rather than on "relevant" publications.\n Although the numerical discussion is based on one case, there is little doubt\nthat the law can be verified in many other situations. Therefore, variants and\ngeneralizations could be later produced in order to quantify co-author roles,\nin a temporary or long lasting stable team(s), and lead to criteria about\nfunding, career measurements or even induce career strategies.\n