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Further characterizations of the Hirsch index

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Abstract

The Hirsch index is a number that synthesizes a researcher’s output. It is defined as the maximum number h such that the researcher has h papers with at least h citations each. Four characterizations of the Hirsch index are suggested. The most compact one relies on the interpretation of the index as providing the number of valuable papers in an output and postulates three axioms. One, only cited papers can be valuable. Two, the index is strongly monotonic: if output x has more papers than output y and each paper in x has more citations than the most cited paper in y, then x has more valuable papers than y. And three, the minimum amount of citations under which a paper becomes valuable is different for each paper.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support from the Secretaría de Estado de Investigación of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (research project SEJ2007-67580-C02-01) and from the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació (Generalitat de Catalunya, research project 2005SGR-00949) is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Departament d’Economia, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Avinguda de la Universitat 1, 43204, Reus, Spain

    Antonio Quesada

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  1. Antonio Quesada
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Correspondence to Antonio Quesada.

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Quesada, A. Further characterizations of the Hirsch index. Scientometrics 87, 107–114 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0307-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0307-4

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