Abstract
Journal impact factor (which reflects a particular journal's quality) and H index (which reflects the number and quality of an author's publications) are two measures of research quality. It has been argued that the H index outperforms the impact factor for evaluation purposes. Using articles first-authored or last-authored by board members of Retrovirology, we show here that the reverse is true when the future success of an article is to be predicted. The H index proved unsuitable for this specific task because, surprisingly, an article's odds of becoming a 'hit' appear independent of the pre-eminence of its author. We discuss implications for the peer-review process.
Highlights
Jeang [1] argued forcefully for the use of individualized citation metrics instead of measures of journal quality for evaluation purposes
We agree with Jeang that individual merit is suitably measured by individualized citation metrics, which predict scientists' future success well [2]
How can you decide which ones are worthy of your time when citation frequencies are not yet available? You may infer article quality from an individualized citation metric like the H index of the author; alternatively, you may base your inference on a measure of journal quality like its impact factor (IF, which reflects the average citation frequency of articles from a particular journal)
Summary
Jeang [1] argued forcefully for the use of individualized citation metrics instead of measures of journal quality for evaluation purposes. Not because IFs work well – as Jeang [1] correctly noted, citation frequencies vary greatly for articles in the same journal – but because the H index should be completely unsuitable for this specific task. This is because authors who publish the most highly cited publications publish the highest number of ignored publications [6]. The first order correlation between last author's H index and log(citations+1) was not significant and again even slightly negative (r = -.06, p = .26).
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