Which of these indicators is most commonly used in your country to check the "quality" of a researcher: ISI index h or Scopus index h or GoogleScholar index h? Why?
I prefer to use the "Scopus index h" because of the number of journals on this basis and therefore can be more faithful to the actual citation of the author in qualified journals. Although I recognize that the "ISI index h" is more selective, but loses important information due to the lower number of newspapers in the database when compared to Scopus. The weakest scientific indicator is from to GoogleScholar. So, It is little used in Brazil for most areas of science.
Brazil's leading research agencies (CAPES and CNPq) are ISI index h, but I believe this benefits some scientific areas and harms others.
Please, could you left your opinion here?
Lucindo - you've presented your question pretty much as I view it. ISI is the most conservative h-index indicator. It was the first universally recognised measure and used to be the main measure for most institutions. However, many regard it's metrics as too conservative and its journal range too restrictive. Google Scholar, as you point out is the most 'generous'. That's because it acknowledges a much wider range of journals - and other sources, such as theses, books, reports etc. Like you say - it is a truer representation of an authors overall academic 'reach'. To me - a citation is a citation - regardless of the source. However, Google Scholar is seen by some as not 'academic' enough. Therefore, I believe that the more common 'default' now, for many, is to refer to Scopus.
Dear Dean Whitehead, thank you so much for your opinion. I think Brazil is running in this direction. Cheers.
We do acknowledge that alternative metric disadvantages review journals with a small number of highly cited paper, but we conclude that in the field of Economics and Business in general, the Google Scholar based h-index provides a credible alternative for ranking journals. It addresses some of the statistical limitations underlying the JIF and is more suitable to measure a journal’s wider economic or social impact rather than its impact on an academic audience only. As such we argue that the Google Scholar h-index might provide a more accurate and comprehensive measure of journal impact and at the very least should be considered as a supplement to ISI-based impact analyses. However, even though an assessment of journal impact based on the journal’s Google Scholar h-index might be more accurate and comprehensive than relying only on an ISI-based impact analysis, we would like to express strong caution against a single-minded focus on journal impact in evaluating individual scholars’ research output.
Ask if your school has a policy about this. If not, cite whichever appeals to you. Google Scholar is likely to have the highest score.
Interesting analysis Prof Ariful Islam and Prof Michael W. Marek. I appreciated your comments and opinions.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, so I think Scopus h-index is best to measure scholarly success and most acceptable by the scientific community.
Scopus h-index is currently used as an author's performance indicator. Followers of this important question may be interested in this article:
Haley, Jackie Earle & Miller, Jonny Lee, 2018. "Is Scopus polluting its own database by indexing junk articles? A case study of five journals," MPRA Paper91662, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2019
https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/91662.html
Thanks Prof Sahab Uddin and Prof Aceil Alkhatib for sharing your opinions on this topic. I seem to think similar with you about the most robust indicator. Cheers
As you said it is difficult to choose just one indicator to measure the quality of the researcher. I believe the assessment of the researcher's relevance will vary greatly due to the purpose of that assessment. For example: similar factor does not reveal the researcher's leadership ability to coordinate projects and etc. Congratulations on the initiative! It's a hot topic than ever! abraço
It is true my friend, your point of view is perfect in my opinion, but we need to point out that ISI Index h cannot always be the faithful of the balance, as has always been pointed out by research agencies. The researcher's leadership and what we might call the "set of the work" should be the most important. "Abraço" my dear friend Iron Men Lamartine!
I partially agree with Md. Sahab Uddin
Google Scholar retrieved a considerably larger number of items than either from ISI or Scopus. However, one must note that a large number of these references were to preprint repositories. Preprint repositories allow researchers to become updated on recent developments, but they should be evaluated with care, since they are not peer-reviewed publications. In addition, Google Scholar is not always able to correctly identify the publication year of the item, and citations are not always attributed to the correct publication. Thus, it concludes that Google Scholar cannot be a substitute for ISI.
In my opinion, more than one tool should be used to calculate the h-index because one tool alone cannot be relied on to provide a thorough assessment of a researcher’s impact. If researchers are interested in a comprehensive h-index, they should aggregate the citing references located by ISI and Scopus. Because h-index rankings differ among databases, comparisons between researchers should be done only within a specified database.
Thanks..
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