Chapter 7: H Index Weighted by Eigenfactor of Citations for Journal Evaluation Available to Purchase

The h index is widely used for academic evaluation as it incorporates the quantity and quality of scientific output in a simple way. However, after a lot of studies, scholars have found some drawbacks of the h-index, and proposed many corresponding indicators to improve h index. Although there are many h type indicators, few studies have taken into account the quality of citations. Most indices assume citations are equally important, but this assumption is obviously unpractical. A paper cited by top journals is more valuable than cited by marginal journals. This chapter improves the h index by assigning weights to all citations based on the Eigenfactor scores of citation source, and proposes the h_we index (h type index weighted by Eigenfactor of citations).

This chapter validates the effectiveness of the h_we index by comparing the ranks of 20 journals in the field of Operations Research and Management Science. Five of these 20 journals are included in UTD24 journals listed by the University of Texas at Dallas. We analyze the differences and correlations among the h_we index, journal impact factors (JIF), Eigenfactor, and three h-type indices using Spearman correlation analysis and factor analysis. We find the h_we index is significantly correlated with Eigenfactor and h-type indices, but not with JIF, and the ranks of four UTD24 periodicals have been improved by h_we index compared with JIF. These results show that the index is an effective indicator that can reflect the real impact of journals, and h_we index makes an incremental contribution against the JIF.

We further propose h_we (T) index to increase the discrimination of the index and to rank journals with same h_we.