Theory and practise of the g-index.pdf

Jointly published by Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest Scientometrics, Vol. 69, No. 1 (2006) 131–152 and Springer, Dordrecht Received January 31, 2006 Address for correspondence: LEO EGGHE Hasselt University, Agoralaan, B–3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium E-mail: leo.egghe@uhasselt.be 0138–9130/US $ 20.00 Copyright ? 2006 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest All rights reserved Theory and practise of the g-index LEO EGGHEa,b a Universiteit Hasselt (UHasselt), Campus Diepenbeek (Belgium) b Universiteit Antwerpen (UA), Campus Drie Eiken, Wilrijk (Belgium) The g-index is introduced as an improvement of the h-index of Hirsch to measure the global citation performance of a set of articles. If this set is ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the g-index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g2 citations. We prove the unique existence of g for any set of articles and we have that g ≥ h. The general Lotkaian theory of the g-index is presented and we show that αα α α α 11 2 1 Tg ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?= where α 2 is the Lotkaian exponent and where T denotes the total number of sources. We then present the g-index of the (still active) Price medallists for their complete careers up to 1972 and compare it with the h-index. It is shown that the g-index inherits all the good properties of the h-index and, in addition, better takes into account the citation scores of the top articles. This yields a better distinction between and order of the scientists from the point of view of visibility. L. EGGHE: Theory and practise of the g-index 132 Scientometrics 69 (2006) I. Introduction Recently the physicist HIRSCH (2005)) introduced the so-called h-index – see also BALL (2005), BRAUN et al. (2005), GL?NZEL (2006a,b), EGGHE ROUSSEAU (2006). For any general “set of papers” one can arrange these papers in decreasing order of the number of citations they received. The h-index is then the largest rank h = r such that the p