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Fiorenzo Franceschini1, Maurizio Galetto, Domenico Maisano, LucaMastrogiacomo
1 fiorenzo.franceschini@polito.it
Politecnico di Torino, DIGEP (Department of Management and Production Engineering), CorsoDucadegliAbruzzi 24, 10129, Torino (Italy)
Abstract
Based on an idea by Kosmulski, Franceschini et al. (to appear on Scientometrics, 2012) propose to classify a publication as successful when it receives more citations than a specific comparison term (CT). In the intention of the authors CT should be a suitable estimate of the number of citations that a publication in a certain scientific context and period of time should potentially achieve. According to this definition, the success-index is defined as the number of successful papers, among a group of publications examined, such as those associated to a scientist or a journal. In the first part of the paper, the success-index is recalled, discussing its properties and limitations. Next, relying on the theory of Information Production Processes (IPPs), an informetric model of the index is formulated, for a better comprehension of the index and its properties. Particular emphasis is given to a theoretical sensitivity analysis of the index.
Keywords: Lotkas Law, s-index, h-index, success index.
1. Introduction
Kosmulski ADDIN EN.CITE Kosmulski2011179(2011)17917917Kosmulski, M.Successful papers: A new idea in evaluation of scientific outputJournal of InformetricsJournal of Informetrics481-485520111751-1577( HYPERLINK \l "_ENREF_20" \o "Kosmulski, 2011 #179" 2011) recently proposed to classify a paper as successful when receiving more citations than those made. Developing this idea, he introduced a new indicator called Number of Successful Papers (NSP), which makes it possible to isolate a subset of publications, defined as successful papers, among a group of publications examinede.g., those associated to a scientist or a journal. Apart from being relatively simple and intuitive, NSP enables cross-field normalization at the level of individual publication. In fact, the number of citations (or references) made is used as an indicator of citation propensity acting as a comparison/normalization term for normalizing the citations received by the paper itself. One of the greatest advantages of NSP is that it can be applied to groups of heterogeneous papers, in terms of scientific (sub-)field, e.g., the overall scientific output of researchers affiliated to different departments or different research institution, etc..
Considering NSP from a broader perspective, it can be seen thatgiven a generic set of publicationsthis indicator allows to select an elite subset. This selection can also be made by other indicators in the literature: e.g., let us consider the h-core approach ADDIN EN.CITE Hirsch2005139(Hirsch 2005)13913917Hirsch, J.E.An index to quantify an individual's scientific research outputProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of AmericaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of America16569-16572102462005( HYPERLINK \l "_ENREF_17" \o "Hirsch, 2005 #139" Hirsch 2005), the selection by the - i n d i c a t o r A D D I N E N . C I T E <