Citation Indices: A Review

Abstract

take the equal rank. It does not count the citations, means it ignores theimpact of the publications. Since it is easy to calculate,therefore it is still being used for academic promotions inPakistan and other countries. h-index: To overcome the problems mentioned in the introduction, Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist from University of California, USA has developed a reasonably better criterion of a scientist’s productivity and citations, known as h-index 1 ,which is defined as: A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np articles have at least h citations each and the other (Np-h) articles haveless than h citations each. It is robust (unaffected by many uncited articles, as well as some highly cited articles) and it mingled by publicationsand citations. Hence, this index supports those scientistswho publish a continuous stream of articles with persistingand above average impact. 2 A further advantage of h index To measure the contribution of a scientist is not only an academic exercise. It helps greatly to the promotion committees, funding agencies, and national & international awarding commissions. Many citations indices have been developed to determine the contribution and impact of scientists' researches. This review article covers 27 citation indices, and computed 23 indices which are not very difficult to compute. Values of these indices are calculated using the author's citations. To determine the quality of research performance it is suggested to use several indices and indicators, instead of only one. However, there is dire need to develop a better index which should be easy to calculate and reduce the drawbacks of h related indices.