The H-index in Life and Health Sciences: Advantages, Drawbacks and Challenging Opportunities

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of scientific publications. The h-index offers a consistent estimation method about a researcher’s overall scientific achievements since it combines the total number of publications (i.e., productivity) and the number of citations (i.e., quality of those publications). In other words, the h-index is intended to measure simultaneously the quality and quantity of scientific output in a cumulative approach and does not provide data regarding the recent productivity. This editorial presents advantages and limitations of h-index that all researchers in health sciences need to be aware of, especially if this metric is used for professional progression, and discusses the simple modification indexed to “academic/scientific age”. It is obvious that no single metric is perfect, and the use of two or more metrics is more prone to success.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Clavier ◽  
Emilie Occhiali ◽  
Zoé Demailly ◽  
Vincent Compère ◽  
Benoit Veber ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Social networks are now essential tools for promoting research and researchers. However, there is no study investigating the link between presence or not on professional social networks and scientific publication or citation for a given researcher. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to study the link between professional presence on social networks and scientific publications/citations among anesthesia researchers. METHODS We included all the French full professors and associate professors of anesthesia. We analyzed their presence on the social networks Twitter (professional account with ≥1 tweet over the 6 previous months) and ResearchGate. We extracted their bibliometric parameters for the 2016-2020 period via the Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics) database in the Science Citation Index-Expanded index. RESULTS A total of 162 researchers were analyzed; 42 (25.9%) had an active Twitter account and 110 (67.9%) a ResearchGate account. There was no difference between associate professors and full professors regarding active presence on Twitter (8/23 [35%] vs. 34/139 [24.5%], respectively; <i>P</i>=.31) or ResearchGate (15/23 [65%] vs. 95/139 [68.3%], respectively; <i>P</i>=.81). Researchers with an active Twitter account (median [IQR]) had more scientific publications (45 [28-61] vs. 26 [12-41]; <i>P</i>&lt;.001), a higher h-index (12 [8-16] vs. 8 [5-11]; <i>P</i>&lt;.001), a higher number of citations per publication (12.54 [9.65-21.8] vs. 10.63 [5.67-16.10]; <i>P</i>=.01), and a higher number of citations (563 [321-896] vs. 263 [105-484]; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). Researchers with a ResearchGate account (median [IQR]) had more scientific publications (33 [17-47] vs. 26 [9-43]; <i>P</i>=.03) and a higher h-index (9 [6-13] vs. 8 [3-11]; <i>P</i>=.03). There was no difference between researchers with a ResearchGate account and those without it concerning the number of citations per publication and overall number of citations. In multivariate analysis including sex, academic status, and presence on social networks, the presence on Twitter was associated with the number of publications (β=20.2; <i>P</i>&lt;.001), the number of citations (β=494.5; <i>P</i>&lt;.001), and the h-index (β=4.5; <i>P</i>&lt;.001). CONCLUSIONS Among French anesthesia researchers, an active presence on Twitter is associated with higher scientific publication and citations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-28
Author(s):  
Hamdy M. Youssef ◽  
◽  
Alaa A. El-Bary ◽  
◽  

In academic societies, it is essential to measure the efficiency of the researchers, scientists, institutions, departments, and universities by using a standard method that depends on their publications and citations. This work is devoted to constructing a new index that can measure the quality of the publications of any source mentioned above. The main goal of this new index is to fix the shortcoming of the current indices, such as the well-known h-index. Thus, we assumed a new index that is very sensitive to any change in the total number of publications, the total number of citations, and citations of each publication. The new index is called HY-index, is more sensitive to any change in the publications or the citations. The suggested data of the two authors have been discussed with various situations by using HY-index. This index has been applied to the authors of the recent paper as a real study case by using their data from SCOPUS.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Medha A Joshi

ABSTRACT Evaluation of quality and quantity of publications can be done using a set of statistical and mathematical indices called bibliometric indicators. Two major categories of indicators are (1) quantitative indicators that measure the research productivity of a researcher and (2) performance indicators that evaluate the quality of publications. Bibliometric indicators are important for both the individual researcher and organizations. They are widely used to compare the performance of the individual researchers, journals and universities. Many of the appointments, promotions and allocation of research funds are based on these indicators. This review article describes some of the currently used bibliometric indicators such as journal impact factor, crown indicator, h-index and it's variants. It is suggested that for comparison of scientific impact and scientific output of researchers due consideration should be given to various factors affecting theses indicators. How to cite this article Joshi MA. Bibliometric Indicators for Evaluating the Quality of Scientific Publications. J Contemp Dent Pract 2014;15(2):258-262.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 685-703
Author(s):  
Waseem Hassan ◽  
Jean Paul Kamdem ◽  
Mohammad Amjad Kamal ◽  
Joao Batista Teixeira da Rocha

Background: Scopus is regularly covering Current Drug Metabolism from 2000 onwards. Objective: The major objective is to perform the 1st bibliometric analysis of Current Drug Metabolism (CDM). Methods: The data was retrieved from Scopus in April-May 2020 for detail analysis. Results: The total number of publications was found to be 1551, with 955 reviews (61.57%) and 466 articles (30.05%). From 2000 onwards, we calculated the relative growth rate and doubling time. Based on the number of publications, total 4418 authors, 3235 institutions and 83 countries were directly involved in all publications. M.A. Kamal is the highly productive scientist with fifty-three (53 or 3.73%) publications, King Abdulaziz University is the top university with the highest number of publications (58 or 4.13%) and the USA is the top-ranked country with 365 publications (25.96%). We also provided the h-index, total citations (TC), h-index without self-citations (WSC) and total WSC of the top ten authors, universities and countries. In citations analysis, Prof. Zhou S.F. was the top scientist with the highest (1594) number of citations. In institutional category Department of Drug Metabolism, Merck Research Laboratories, Rahway, United States, is the top ranked institutes with 654 total citations. While, United States is the top-ranked country with 18409 total citations. In co-words analysis, 3387, 30564 and 17333 terms in titles of the manuscripts, abstracts and keywords were recorded, respectively. This indicated that CDM principally focused on understanding drug development ranging from its efficacy to delivery, metabolism, distribution, safety and mechanism of actions. Similarly, various specific drugs were thoroughly discussed in publications. Various enzymatic, genetics, proteins and cancer-related aspects were also described. For data presentations, we used VOSviewer graphical maps. Conclusion: The data confirm that CDM showed continuous growth in the number of publications and citations. However significant measures are needed to make overall progress and improve the rankings in relevant categories.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave L Dixon ◽  
William L Baker

BACKGROUND The impact and quality of a faculty members publications is a key factor in promotion and tenure decisions and career advancement. Traditional measures, including citation counts and journal impact factor, have notable limitations. Since 2010, alternative metrics have been proposed as another means of assessing the impact and quality of scholarly work. The Altmetric Attention Score is an objective score frequently used to determine the immediate reach of a published work across the web, including news outlets, blogs, social media, and more. Several studies evaluating the correlation between the Altmetric Attention Score and number of citations have found mixed results and may be discipline-specific. OBJECTIVE To determine the correlation between higher Altmetric Attention Scores and citation count for journal articles published in major pharmacy journals. METHODS This cross-sectional study evaluated articles from major pharmacy journals ranked in the top 10% according to the Altmetric Attention Score. Sources of attention that determined the Altmetric Attention Score were obtained, as well each articles open access status, article type, study design, and topic. Correlation between journal characteristics, including the Altmetric Attention Score and number of citations, was assessed using the Spearman’s correlation test. A Kruskal-Wallis 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the Altmetric Attention Scores between journals. RESULTS Six major pharmacy journals were identified. A total of 1,376 articles were published in 2017 and 137 of these represented the top 10% with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores. The median Altmetric Attention Score was 19 (IQR 15-28). Twitter and Mendeley were the most common sources of attention. Over half (56.2%) of the articles were original investigations and 49.8% were either cross-sectional, qualitative, or cohort studies. No significant correlation was found between the Altmetric Attention Score and citation count (rs=0.07, P = 0.485). Mendeley was the only attention source that correlated with the number of citations (rs=0.486, P<0.001). The median Altmetric Attention Score varied widely between each journal (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS The overall median Altmetric Attention score of 19 suggests articles published in major pharmacy journals are near the top 5% of all scientific output. However, we found no correlation between the Altmetric Attention Score and number of citations for articles published in major pharmacy journals in the year 2017.


2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Waleed M. Sweileh

Abstract Background Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global challenge that requires a “One Health” approach to achieve better public health outcomes for people, animals, and the environment. Numerous bibliometric studies were published on AMR in humans. However, none was published in food-producing animals. The current study aimed at assessing and analyzing scientific publications on AMR in food-producing animals. Method A validated search query was developed and entered in Scopus advanced search function to retrieve and quantitatively analyze relevant documents. Bibliometric indicators and mapping were presented. The study period was from 2000 to 2019. Results The search query retrieved 2852 documents. During the period from 2015 to 2019, approximately 48% of the retrieved documents were published. The article about the discovery of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance in pigs received the highest number of citations (n = 1970). The Journal of Food Protection (n = 123; 4.3%) ranked first in the number of publications while the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal ranked first in the number of citations per document. The USA led with 576 (20.2%) documents followed by China (n = 375; 13.1%). When the number of publications was standardized by income and population size, India (n = 51.5) ranked first followed by China (n = 38.3) and Brazil (n = 13.4). The growth of publications from China exceeded that of the USA in the last 3 years of the study period. Research collaboration in this field was inadequate. Mapping author keywords showed that E. coli, Salmonella, poultry, Campylobacter, chicken, cattle, and resistant genes were most frequent. The retrieved documents existed in five research themes. The largest research theme was about AMR in Salmonella in food-producing animals. The most recent research theme was about the dissemination and molecular transfer of AMR genes into the environment and among different bacterial strains. Conclusion Hot spots of research on AMR in food-producing animals match the world regions of reported hot spots of AMR in animals. Research collaboration in this field is of great importance, especially with low- and middle-income countries. Data on AMR need to be collected nationally and internationally to implement the “One Health” approach in the fight against AMR.


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-143
Author(s):  
S Risal ◽  
H N Prasad

Scientific productivity of any academic institution is expressed by the total number of publications generated by its academic faculties and the use of the publication by scientific community. Citation analysis is done to evaluate the use of the publications. Use of the publication can be studied with the help of bibliometric analysis. Counting publication, publications trends, authorship patterns and citation analysis are parts of bibliometric analysis. Web of Science is one of the best databases which allow the study in the use of the publications through citation analysis. In this article, scientific articles produced by the faculties and other international affiliated faculties of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences have been studied. Citation analysis of scientific publications of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences is done with the help of the Web of Science, a product of Thomason Reuters.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hren.v10i2.6584 Health Renaissance 2012; Vol 10 (No.2); 139-143 


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoleikha Ranjbar-Pirmousa ◽  
Narges Borji-Zemeidani ◽  
Mirsaeed Attarch ◽  
Shadman Nemati ◽  
Farzaneh Aminpour

Evaluation of the research status of the academic institution provides it with the possibility of accurate research policymaking. Scientometric indicators are important tools for evaluating scientific activities of individuals, groups, and institutions. The current research aims to analysis the research performance of medical universities in Northern Iran based on quantitative and qualitative scientometric indicators. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, the Scopus-indexed scientific documents provided by medical universities in the Northern Iran have been studied in terms of number of publications, number of citations, average number of Citations per Publication (C/P), Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), scientific collaborations, the number of in top 10% citation percentile, and the number of publications in top 10% journal percentile according to CiteScore, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and SCImagoJournal Rank (SJR) indicators during a five years period. According to the findings, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences has gained the highest position in terms of the number of publications and citations, number of publications with international and national collaborations, and  academic-industrial collaborations., while Golestan University of Medical Sciences has gained a higher position in terms of scientific outputs in top 10% citation percentile and journal percentile, CiteScore, SNIP, SJR and C/P. In terms of the FWCI indicator, Golestan University of Medical Sciences has achieved the highest value. Considering academic status and research capabilities of medical universities in the Northern Iran, increasing academic-industrial collaboration, expanding academic collaboration with superior universities and institutions around the world can be effective in increasing the quality of research and upgrading academic ranks of universities at national, regional and international levels. © 2019Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved. Acta MedIran 2019;57(7):448-455.


2012 ◽  
Vol 153 (48) ◽  
pp. 1905-1917
Author(s):  
Anna Berhidi ◽  
Zsuzsa Margittai ◽  
Lívia Vasas

Introduction: The first step in the process of acquisition of impact factor for a scientific journal is to get registered at Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. Aim: The aim of this article is to evaluate the content and structure of Orvosi Hetilap with regards to selection criteria of Thomson Reuters, in particular to objectives of citation analysis. Methods: Authors evaluated issues of Orvosi Hetilap published in 2011 and calculated the unofficial impact factor of the journal based on systematic search in various citation index databases. Number of citations, quality of citing journals and scientific output of the editorial board members were evaluated. Adherence to guidelines of international publishers was assessed, as well. Results: Unofficial impact factor of Orvosi Hetilap has been continuously rising every year in the past decade (except for 2004 and 2010). The articles of Orvosi Hetilap are widely cited by international authors and high impact factor journals, too. Further, more than half the articles cited are open access. The most frequently cited categories are original and review articles as well as clinical studies. Orvosi Hetilap is a weekly published journal, which is covered by many international databases such as PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Embase, and BIOSIS Previews. As regards to the scientific output of the editorial board members, the truncated mean of the number of their publications was 497, citations 2446, independent citations 2014 and h-index 21. Conclusions: While Orvosi Hetilap fulfils many criteria for getting covered by Thomson Reuters, it is worthwhile to implement a method of online citation system in order to increase the number of citations. In addition, scientific publications of all editorial board members should be made easily accessible. Finally, publications of comparative studies by multiple authors are encouraged as well as papers containing epidemiological data analyses. Orv. Hetil., 2012, 153, 1905–1917.


2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (06) ◽  
pp. 488-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schwarzer ◽  
Leonhard Alscher ◽  
Torsten Doenst

Abstract Background Scientific publications are important for the advancement in medicine. Surgical disciplines including cardiac surgery are frequently considered not scientifically leading. However, a specific comparison between surgical and nonsurgical disciplines has not yet been performed. We thus compared scientific output of German departments of cardiac surgery with nonsurgical cardiology departments and surgical departments not addressing the heart (general surgery) of 34 universities in Germany. Methods For each university, the personnel working at the different departments were identified on the internet homepage in 2014. We searched for publications of these persons in 2011 to 2013 on PubMed, identified author position, coauthors, and type of article, as well as journal impact factor (JIF). Results There were 931 academic persons in cardiac surgery, 1,486 in general surgery, and 1,814 in cardiology with 12,096 publications related to these persons on PubMed. Cardiology published most manuscripts, including manuscripts from research conducted (first author), initiated (senior author), or both. Cardiac surgery had the least publications and had fewer authors from other departments or institutions. The average JIF was higher in cardiology compared with the two surgical disciplines. However, relating the number of publications to the number of employees in the departments, the differences were no longer apparent. Conclusion We conclude that the number of publications in German universities appears to be a function of the number of academic personnel and not of the discipline. The lower JIFs in surgery may be due to the smaller surgical fields and/or due to less high impact interdisciplinary/interinstitutional publications in surgery.


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