The HF-rating as a universal complement to the h-index

Abstract

Interdisciplinary comparison has been a constant objective of bibliometrics. The well-known h-index and its alternatives have not achieved this objective. Based on the gh-rating or ghent-rating, a categorization of academic articles into tiers of publications within similar citations ranges, a new ratio is proposed, the high fame hf-ratio. This ratio is calculated as the adjusted average of the weighted factors of the researchers’ best articles; it leads to an associated rating also designated by the symbols AAA, AA, A, BBB, B, C, D, … etc. comparable to financial ratings such as Moody’s and S&P ratings. Adding this rating to the h-index forms the high fame HF-rating. The HF-rating provides the average grade of a researcher’s best papers benchmarked in their field. This new HF-rating induces some qualitative elements in the evaluation of research, includes more selectivity and mitigates between classic h-indices. This universal HF-rating complements the well-known h-index with a relative indication of its influence in its field that also allows inter-field comparison. The methodology is illustrated with examples of researchers from different disciplines with different distributions of citations.