A framework for the measurement and prediction of an individual scientist's performance

Quantitative bibliometric indicators are widely used to evaluate the performance of scientists. However, traditional indicators do not much rely on the analysis of the processes intended to measure and the practical goals of the measurement. In this study, I propose a simple framework to measure and predict an individual researcher's scientific performance that takes into account the main regularities of publication and citation processes and the requirements of practical tasks. Statistical properties of the new indicator - a scientist's personal impact rate - are illustrated by its application to a sample of Estonian researchers.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

A Taxonomy of Bibliometric Performance Indicators Based on the Property of Consistency

We propose a taxonomy of bibliometric indicators of scientific performance. The taxonomy relies on the property of consistency. The h-index is shown not to have this important property.h-index;consistency;bibliometric performance indicator;scientific performance;taxonomy

Bibliometric Indicators of Young Authors in Astrophysics: Can Later Stars be Predicted?

We test 16 bibliometric indicators with respect to their validity at the level of the individual researcher by estimating their power to predict later successful researchers. We compare the indicators of a sample of astrophysics researchers who later co-authored highly cited papers before their first landmark paper with the distributions of these indicators over a random control group of young authors in astronomy and astrophysics. We find that field and citation-window normalisation substantially improves the predicting power of citation indicators. The two indicators of total influence based on citation numbers normalised with expected citation numbers are the only indicators which show differences between later stars and random authors significant on a 1% level. Indicators of paper output are not very useful to predict later stars. The famous $h$-index makes no difference at all between later stars and the random control group.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure