The i100-index, i1000-index and i10,000-index: expansion and fortification of the Google Scholar h-index for finer-scale citation descriptions and researcher classification

Abstract

The Hirsch or h-index continues to be one of the most popular author-based metrics, despite some of its flaws and limitations. In some cases, citations to some academics’ work are increasing at a phenomenal pace, and in some exceptional cases such as Highly Cited Researchers (HCRs), whether alive or deceased, citation counts to their work have reached tens or hundreds of thousands, with h-indexes in the hundreds. Although the h-index currently has one additional derivative index, the i10-index, which is a measure of the number of publications with 10 or more citations, the i10-index is clearly not a sufficient differentiating factor for academics with very high citation counts such as HCRs. In this letter, an expansion of this metric is proposed to include an i100-index, an i1000-index, and an i10,000-index, which indicate the number of publications with 100, 1000, or 10,000 or more citations, respectively. These three new, expanded and/or modified metrics that are based on the h-index may assist in more effectively differentiating the top echelon of HCRs or leaders in a specific field of study. The i100-, i1000-, and i10,000-indexes for 10 HCRs (Michel Foucault, Ronald C. Kessler, Graham Colditz, Sigmund Freud, JoAnn E. Manson, Shizuo Akira, Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Langer, Eric Lander, and Bert Vogelstein) were calculated. Limitations to these three new proposed h-index-based indexes are noted.