Abstract
There is an increasing emphasis on the use of metrics for assessing the research contribution of academics, departments, journals or conferences. Contribution has two dimensions: quantity which can be measured by number/size of the outputs, and quality which is most easily measured by the number of citations. Recently, Hirsch proposed a new metric which is simple, combines both quality and quantity in one number, and is robust to measurement problems. This paper applies the Hirsch-index (h-index) to three groups of management academics—BAM Fellows, INFORMS Fellows and members of COPIOR—in order to evaluate the extent to which the h-index would serve as a reliable measure of the contribution of researchers in the management field.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baden-Fuller C, Ravazzolo F and Schweizer T (2000). Making and measuring reputations—The research ranking of European business schools . Long Range Plann 33: 621–650.
Batista P, Campiteli M, Kinouchi O and Martinez A (2006). Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests? Scientometrics 68: 179–189.
Bornman L and Daniel H-D (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work? Scientometrics 65: 391–392.
Brumback R (2008). Worshipping false idols: The impact factor dilemma . J Child Neurol 23: 365–367.
Burrell Q (2007a). Hirsch's h-index: A stochastic model . J Inform 1: 16–25.
Burrell Q (2007b). Hirsch index or Hirsch rate? Some thoughts arising from Liang's data . Scientometrics 73: 19–28.
Checkland P (1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice . Wiley: Chichester.
Cronin B and Meho L (2006). Using the h-index to rank influential information scientists . J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 57: 1275–1278.
DfES (2006). Reform of Higher Education Research Assessment and Funding. DRN05/13, Department for Education and Skills: London.
Egghe L (2006). Theory and practice of the g-index . Scientometrics 69: 131–152.
Garfield E (1972). Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation . Science 178: 471–479.
Glänzel W (2006a). On the h-index—a mathematical approach to a new measure of publication activity and citation impact . Scientometrics 67: 315–321.
Glänzel W (2006b). On the opportunities and limitations of the h-index . Sci Focus 1: 10–11.
Glänzel W and Schubert A (1988). Theoretical and empirical studies of the tail of scientometric distributions . In: Egghe L. and Rousseau R. (eds). Informetrics 87/88. Elsevier: New York, pp. 75–83.
Harzing A-W (2007a). Publish or Perish, http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm, Access: June 2007.
Harzing A-W (2007b). Reflections on Google Scholar, http://www.harzing.com/pop_gs.htm, Access: March, 2007.
Hirsch J (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 102, pp 16569–16572.
Iglesias J and Pecharroman C (2006). Scaling the h-index for different scientific ISI fields, arXiv:physics/0607224v1 [physics.soc-ph], Access: September, 2007.
Jennings C (1998). Citation data: the wrong impact? Nat Neurosci 1: 641–642.
Kelly C and Jennions D (2006). The h index and career assessment by numbers . TRENDS Ecol Evol 21: 167–170.
Liang L (2006). h-index sequence and h-index matrix: Constructions and applications . Scientometrics 69: 153–159.
Macdonald S and Kam J (2007). Ring a ring o'roses: Quality journals and gamesmanship in management studies . J Mngt Stud 44: 640–655.
MacRoberts M and MacRoberts B (1987). Problems of citation analysis: A critical review . J Am Soc Inform Sci 40: 342–349.
Meho L and Yang K (2007). Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science versus Scopus and Google Scholar . J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 58: 2105–2125.
Mingers J (2008). Exploring the dynamics of journal citations: Modelling with S-curves . J Opl Res Soc 59: 1013–1025.
Mingers J and Harzing A-W (2007). Ranking journals in business and management: A statistical analysis of the Harzing dataset . Eur J Inform Syst 16: 303–316.
Oppenheim C (2007). Using the h-index to rank influential British researchers in information science and librarianship . J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 58: 297–301.
Saad G (2006). Exploring the h-index at the author and journal levels using bibliometric data of productive consumer scholars and business-related journals respectively . Scientometrics 69: 117–120.
Seglen P (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research . Brit Med J 314: 498–502.
Sidiropoulos A, Katsaros D and Manolopoulos Y (2006). Generalized h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks, arXiv:cs.DL/0607066 v1, Access: May, 2007.
van Raan A (2005). Comparison of the hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgement for 147 chemistry research groups . Scientometrics 67: 491–502.
van Raan AJ (2003). The use of bibliometric analysis in research performance assessment and monitoring of interdisciplinary scientific developments . Technol Assess—Theory Pract 1: 20–29.
Walters W (2007). Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field . Inform Process Mngt 43: 1121–1132.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mingers, J. Measuring the research contribution of management academics using the Hirsch-index. J Oper Res Soc 60, 1143–1153 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2008.94
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2008.94