OF THE H-INDEX AND ITS ALTERNATIVES: AN APPLICATION TO THE 100 MOST PROLIFIC ECONOMISTS

The h-index is a recent but already quite popular way of measuring research quality and quantity. However, it discounts highly-cited papers. The g-index corrects for this, but it is sensitivity to the number of never-cited papers. Besides, h- or g-index-based rankings have a large number of ties. Therefore, this paper introduces two new indices, and tests their performance for the 100 most prolific economists. A researcher has a t-number (f-number) of t (f) if t (f) is the largest number for which it holds that she has t (f) publications for which the geometric (harmonic) average number of citations is at least t (f). The new indices overcome the shortcomings of the old indices.rankings

The impact factor's Matthew effect: a natural experiment in bibliometrics

Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries. However, these studies seldom control for the intrinsic "quality" of papers or of researchers--"better" (however defined) papers or researchers could receive higher citation rates because they are indeed of better quality. Using an original method for controlling the intrinsic value of papers--identical duplicate papers published in different journals with different impact factors--this paper shows that the journal in which papers are published have a strong influence on their citation rates, as duplicate papers published in high impact journals obtain, on average, twice as much citations as their identical counterparts published in journals with lower impact factors. The intrinsic value of a paper is thus not the only reason a given paper gets cited or not; there is a specific Matthew effect attached to journals and this gives to paper published there an added value over and above their intrinsic quality.Comment: 7 pages, 2 table

A RATIONAL, SUCCESSIVE G-INDEX APPLIED TO ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN IRELAND

A rational, successive g-index is proposed, and applied to economics departments in Ireland. The successive g-index has greater discriminatory power than the successive h-index, and the rational index performs better still. The rational, successive g-index is also more robust to difference in department size.rankings, individuals, departments

What makes a Scientific Article influential?

In this paper we examine, by means of a citation analysis, which factors influence the impact of articles published in demography journals between 1990 and 1992. Several quantifiable characteristics of the articles (characteristics with respect to authors, visibility, content and journals) are strongly related to their subsequent impact in the social sciences. Articles are most frequently cited when they deal with empirical, ahistorical research focusing on populations in the developed world, when they are prominently placed in a journal issue, when they are written in English and when they appear in core demography journals. Furthermore, although eminent scholars are likely to be cited on the basis of their reputation, the effect of reputation appears to be small in demography

SPECIES DIVERSITY AND HUMAN WELL-BEING: A SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC APPROACH

Economic valuation of biodiversity is generally carried out by applying revealed or stated preference approaches to determine people’s willingness to pay for small changes in management options. Studies on species preservation investigating passive or nonuse values typically rely on stated preference methods such as the contingent valuation approach and often focus on single animal species. The total value of species preservation can only be derived by aggregating the various values. This paper proposes a different approach by investigating country level data on life-satisfaction attempting to explain differences in subjective well-being by reference to amongst other things species diversity. While most recent papers have concentrated on finding determinants of life-satisfaction other than income, little attention has been drawn to spatial interdependencies. Most researchers investigating the determinants of life-satisfaction implicitly assume that subjective well-being is unaffected by events in neighbouring locations. The existence of spatial relationships in the data has implications for the econometric techniques typically employed including misleading inference testing procedures, bias and inconsistency depending on the precise form of the spatial relationship. We extend our analysis by a spatial econometric approach investigating whether and to what extend spatial relationships exist. Spatially weighted variables are shown to be a highly significant determinant of life-satisfaction. As nature does not respect man-made borders, neither does peoples happiness. Furthermore, even when controlling for a range of other factors we find a significant relationship with species diversity; the higher a countries number of bird or mammal species or the lower the percentage of bird species threatened the more satisfied the people are. Overall and from a human perspective, bird species seem to be a better indicator for biodiversity.amenity value, biodiversity, life-satisfaction, spatial econometrics, species diversity, well-being

International inequity aversion and the social cost of carbon

I define the rate of inequity aversion, distinguishing between the pure rate and the consumption rate. I measure the rate of aversion to inequality in consumption as expressed in the development aid given by rich countries to poor ones between 1965 and 2005. There is an ambiguous relationship between the pure rate of inequity aversion and the consumption rate, driven by the rate of risk aversion. However, for a reasonable choice of the rate of risk aversion, rich countries are shown to be inequity averse, and increasingly so over time. The social cost of carbon is very sensitive to equity weighting and assumptions about the rate of risk and inequity aversion. Estimates for the consumption rate of inequity aversion for recent data suggest that the equity-weighted social cost of carbon is less than 50% larger than the unweighted estimate.Inequity aversion, risk aversion, income distribution, development aid, climate change, social cost of carbon

Climate Change and Violent Conflict in Europe over the Last Millennium

We investigate the relationship between a thousand-year history of violent conflict in Europe and various reconstructions of temperature and precipitation. We find that conflict was more intense during colder periods. This relationship is weakening over time, and is not robust to the details of the climate reconstruction or to the sample period. We thus confirm Zhang et al. (2006, Climatic Change, 76, 459-477) that, at least in temperate climates, global warming would, if anything, lead to reduced violent conflict.history, violent conflict, Europe, climate change

Temporal changes in the parameters of statistical distribution of journal impact factor

Statistical distribution of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is characteristically asymmetric and non-mesokurtic. Even the distribution of log10(JIF) exhibits conspicuous skewness and non-mesokurticity. In this paper we estimate the parameters of Johnson SU distribution fitting to the log10(JIF) data for 8 years, 2001 through 2008, and study the temporal variations in those estimated parameters. We also study ‘over-the-samples stability’ in the estimated parameters for each year by the method of re-sampling close to bootstrapping. It has been found that log10(JIF) is Pearson-IV distributed. Johnson SU distribution fits very well to the data and yields parameters stable over the samples. We conclude that Johnson SU distribution is the best choice to fit to the log10(JIF) data. We have also found that over the years the log10(JIF) distribution is becoming more skewed and leptokurtic, possibly suggesting the Mathew effect in operation, which means that more cited journals are cited ever more over time.Journal Impact Factor; Johnson SU Distribution; Mathew effect; over-the-samples stability; bootstrapping; Pearson distribution type IV; re-sampling; skewness; kurtosis; temporal variations

The Matthew effect in environmental science publication: A bibliometric analysis of chemical substances in journal articles

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While environmental research addresses scientific questions of possible societal relevance, it is unclear to what degree research focuses on environmental chemicals in need of documentation for risk assessment purposes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a bibliometric analysis, we used SciFinder to extract Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers for chemicals addressed by publications in the 78 major environmental science journals during 2000-2009. The Web of Science was used to conduct title searches to determine long-term trends for prominent substances and substances considered in need of research attention.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 119,636 journal articles found had 760,056 CAS number links during 2000-2009. The top-20 environmental chemicals consisted of metals, (chlorinated) biphenyls, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, and ethanol and contributed 12% toward the total number of links- Each of the top-20 substances was covered by 2,000-10,000 articles during the decade. The numbers for the 10-year period were similar to the total numbers of pre-2000 articles on the same chemicals. However, substances considered a high priority from a regulatory viewpoint, due to lack of documentation, showed very low publication rates. The persistence in the scientific literature of the top-20 chemicals was only weakly related to their publication in journals with a high impact factor, but some substances achieved high citation rates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The persistence of some environmental chemicals in the scientific literature may be due to a 'Matthew' principle of maintaining prominence for the very reason of having been well researched. Such bias detracts from the societal needs for documentation on less well known environmental hazards, and it may also impact negatively on the potentials for innovation and discovery in research.</p