COMPARATIVE STUDY OF VARIOUS RESEARCH INDICES USED TO MEASURE QUALITY OF RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

Abstract

The success of research projects funded by various agencies can be evaluated by studying the research publications generated from those projects and the research publications can be evaluated using impact factors and citation indices. There are several citation indices commonly used to assess the value/quality of a research publication or the research impact of an author or a journal. Research indices are calculated based on either citation values of research publications of a research scholar or the number of research papers published by a research scholar for a given period. There are many research indices developed by many types of research which include H-index, i10-index, G-index, H(2)-index, HG-index, Q2-index, AR-index, M-quotient, M-index, W-index, Hw-index, E-index, A-index, R-index, W-index, J-index, etc. Out of these citation based research indices, h-index, G-index and i10-index are commonly used in some of the citation databases. Researchers have also studied the problems and limitations associated with these indices. In this paper, we have discussed the most popular research indices presently used which include h-index, G-index, and i-10-index along with their advantages, benefits, constraints, and disadvantages. Most of the research indices are calculated based on number of citations a paper receives. The major limitation of this model is that the citations usually increase with an increase in time even after the researcher dies, the citations and hence the indices continue to grow. It is argued that due to various reasons, a research publication may not attract citations initially for some years and after ten to twenty years some papers may attract citations. The best method of identifying the contribution to research is calculating the annual research index for an author by considering the annual research publications.Accordingly, based on annual research index of an author, his average research contribution for five years, or ten years, or twenty years or any desired period can be determined. Here, we have suggested some of the new research indices to be used for calculating research productivity of individuals as well as a team of people in an organization. The paper also contains some of our newly proposed indices including ARP-Index – (Annual Research Publication Index), RC-Index – (Research Continuation Index), RE-Index (Research expansion Index), Project Productivity Index, and Cost Index and the method of calculating these indices along with their advantages and limitations.