Page 128 - Becoming Metric Wise

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Publication and Citation Analysis

The second one assigns credits as whole numbers or allows for fractions,
in which case the sum of all fractional credits is one. Table 5.1 illustrates
this two-fold distinction.
Harmonic counting (i.e., giving credit according to a harmonic
progression) was originally suggested by Hodge and Greenberg (1981).
This proposal went virtually unnoticed until it was re-proposed by
Hagen (2008). In this proposal, the author ranked at the i-th place in the
author by-line receives a credit equal to
1
i
1 1 1 (5.1)
1 1 1 1 ::: 1
2 3 n
Hagen (2010) proposed to adapt this formula in cases where it is
shown that the last author played a special role, e.g., it is the correspond-
ing author. In that case the first and the last author could receive an equal
credit. We note that any method, such as this, that uses the order in
which authors are placed in the byline is only valid if this order really
represents the importance of the contribution, with a possible exception
for the last author. Complete-normalized counting and harmonic count-
ing are examples of fractional counting: the sum of credits of all coauthors
always equals one.
Giving only the first author a full credit (first author count) is an easy
method. When, however, alphabetical order is applied, this method makes
no sense (unless, maybe, for very large units, as when comparing the
contributions of countries). Lindsey (1980) notes that the straight count
procedure should be considered a sampling strategy. As such, it should be
examined in terms of representativeness. On author level this method
presupposes that the set of papers on which a scientist’s name occurs first
(including solo-authored papers) is a representative sample of all that
scientist’s papers. In this context we also mention that Zuckerman (1968)

Table 5.1 Counting methods
Each contributor Some contributors
receives some credit may not receive any
credit
Credits are natural Complete or normal First author count;
numbers count Major contribution
count
Credits may be Complete-normalized Fractionalized major
fractions, summing fractional counting; contribution count
to one Harmonic counting