An absolute index (Ab-index) to measure a researcher's useful contributions and productivity

Abstract

Bibliographic analysis has been a very powerful tool in evaluating the effective contributions of a researcher and determining his/her future research potential. The lack of an absolute quantification of the author's scientific contributions by the existing measurement system hampers the decision-making process. In this paper, a new metric system, Absolute index (Ab-index), has been proposed that allows a more objective comparison of the contributions of a researcher. The Ab-index takes into account the impact of research findings while keeping in mind the physical and intellectual contributions of the author(s) in accomplishing the task. The Ab-index and h-index were calculated for 10 highly cited geneticists and molecular biologist and 10 young researchers of biological sciences and compared for their relationship to the researchers input as a primary author. This is the first report of a measuring method clarifying the contributions of the first author, corresponding author, and other co-authors and the sharing of credit in a logical ratio. A java application has been developed for the easy calculation of the Ab-index. It can be used as a yardstick for comparing the credibility of different scientists competing for the same resources while the Productivity index (Pr-index), which is the rate of change in the Ab-index per year, can be used for comparing scientists of different age groups. The Ab-index has clear advantage over other popular metric systems in comparing scientific credibility of young scientists. The sum of the Ab-indices earned by individual researchers of an institute per year can be referred to as Pr-index of the institute.

Figure 1. The partial credit (a₀) given to the primary author for articles with 1–100 imaginary authors.

Figure 2. Partial credits earned by the different authors of three important research articles of last decade.

(The articles with 55 and 135 authors have only one combined first and corresponding author but the article with 100 authors has three first co-authors and three corresponding authors who share equal credit).

Figure 3. Comparison of Ab-, h- and w-indices of 10 individuals randomly chosen from top-20 highly cited authors.

Ten individuals were randomly chosen from top-20 highly cited authors in the field of molecular biology and genetics of 2010 (data source: Thomson Reuters Essential Science IndicatorsSM).

Figure 4. Correlation of Ab-, h- and w-indices with the percentage of credit earned as primary author.

The correlation of Ab-, h- and w-indices to the percentage of credit earned as the primary author of ten individuals randomly chosen from top-20 highly cited authors in the field of Molecular Biology & Genetics of the year 2010 (data source: Thomson Reuters Essential Science IndicatorsSM).

Figure 5. Comparison of Ab-index and h-index of ten randomly chosen biologists of age below 40 years.

(Data source: ISI Web of Science and Google Scholar).