Since the use of journal impact factors as frequently used to evaluate researh quality has been criticised for many reaons, might it be useful to devise mertics based upon a given author's impact. E.g. one could normalize citations of an author's papers versus the average for the journals to which they contributed or consider the median value of their impact factor defined as it is for journals. If their papers are cited mroe or less than the average for the journals or their papers had median impact factors that were giher or lower would this be helpful to consider.
John, one can easily draw impact factor of research articles published by a particular author on the similar lines on which IF is drawn for Journals. But, the fact is, it too will have its own set of problems. I believe, H-index is one of the good individual parameters to judge the quality of research work on individual basis.
How biased is the H-factor to the popularity of a given field or research area? Some areas have more publications and citations than others.
John, actually it is not the bias, but differences in the two different research areas, which are being measured with a same yard stick. you wont find similar citation trend in two different research area. on the larger ground you can find a considerable difference in the number of citations received by the research articles from pure sciences to that of social sciences or even Humanities. In sciences at sub discipline level, chemistry is the subject field, in which research articles receive more citations than other science subjects. If you are trying to draw parallels between the science and social science researchers on the basis of citations received then there is no scope.
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