Background:The h-index has already been used by major citation databases to evaluate the academic performance of individual scientists. Although effective and simple, the h-index suffers from some drawbacks that limit its use in accurately and fairly comparing the scientific output of different researchers. These drawbacks include information loss and low resolution: the former refers to the fact that in addition to h2 citations for papers in the h-core, excess citations are completely ignored, whereas the latter means that it is common for a group of researchers to have an identical h-index.Methodology/Principal Findings:To solve these problems, I here propose the e-index, where e2 represents the ignored excess citations, in addition to the h2 citations for h-core papers. Citation information can be completely depicted by using the h-index together with the e-index, which are independent of each other. Some other h-type indices, such as a and R, are h-dependent, have information redundancy with h, and therefore, when used together with h, mask the real differences in excess citations of different researchers.Conclusions/Significance:Although simple, the e-index is a necessary h-index complement, especially for evaluating highly cited scientists or for precisely comparing the scientific output of a group of scientists having an identical h-index. © 2009 Zhang.
CITATION STYLE
Zhang, C. T. (2009). The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Excess Citations. PLoS ONE, 4(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005429
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