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The NIH played a pivotal role in supporting Eugene Garfield’s creation of the Science Citation Index (SCI). As well as being a valuable tool helping scientists to keep abreast of the current literature in their chosen fields, the SCI has for many years also served as the gold standard for a wide range of journal, article and even author rankings within the natural sciences. While supporting the development of the SCI advanced the NIH’s mission as a research center and funding agency, its initial involvement owes more to the NIH’s role and responsibilities as an agency of the federal government. Beginning in the early 1960s, the NIH was pressed by members of Congress to improve its communications programs; shortly thereafter, the NIH (jointly with the NSF) approved funding for Garfield’s proposal. A decade later, the NIH began to use analyses of the data in the index it had funded to evaluate the efficacy of its peer review system of ranking grant proposals, and to compare the efficiency of different funding mechanisms and programs. Correspondence and other material preserved in the archives of the NIH show that these actions were taken primarily in response to pressure from Congress, rather than the scientific community.

El índice h es un indicador de impacto y productividad en investigación propuesto por Hirsch (EEUU, 2005) y asumido por WoK y Scopus que, sin embargo, el área de Comunicación no empieza a tener en cuenta hasta 2012, cuando Google irrumpe en la bibliometría con listas de impacto h de revistas científicas y perfiles de investigadores con el h personal. Este artículo compara índice h y factor de impacto, identifica los indicadores de contexto (g, m, h5, i10), se aproxima a determinar un índice hR referencial para Comunicación y analiza el impacto h de las revistas del área en Iberoamérica. ------------------------------------------------------ The h-index is a research impact and productivity indicator proposed by Hirsch (USA, 2005) and adopted by WoK and Scopus. However, it was not recognised in Communication until Google entered into the field of bibliometry in 2012 by introducing h-impact lists of scientific journals and h-index on scholars’ profiles. This article compares the h-index and the impact factor, identifies the context indicators (g, m, h5, i10), tries to define a reference hR index for the Communication field and analyses the h-impact of journals in this field in the Ibero-American region.

The aim of this paper is to determine if the scientific papers published in high impact journals are not only of sufficient "a priori" quality to be accepted by such journals, but acquire further impact because they are cited by journals with at least a similar impact. A normalized impact factor (NIF) is proposed as a measure to compare the visibility of research conducted by different university departments working in different disciplines. This analysis is supplemented by a study of the distribution by quartiles of the journals involved. In addition, the quality of the journals citing the papers in the sample selected for the study is evaluated to determine research prestige. The feasibility of using citation journal impact in the evaluation as an incentive for research quality is posed in this work. This paper will be of interest to those institutions interested in quality research evaluation as well as those involved in science policy.

Bridges B-0071 and B-0171 in Hamilton County, Ohio have been in service for about fifty years. They are short span bridges with prestressed concrete girders. Until late 2001, they had conventional reinforced concrete decks, which have been replaced with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) decks. Two girders in bridge B-0171 were replaced with new prestressed girders. These bridges are significant as there are few instances of FRP decks on concrete girders. The Hamilton County Engineers Office contracted with the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Cincinnati to perform load testing on the bridges. Information gained from this research will seek to confirm the safety of the new technology, evaluate construction and design techniques with reference to the FRP deck, and determine overall performance of the bridge to provide understanding of the system. The two short span prestressed concrete bridges with fiber reinforced polymer decks were subjected to four sets of nondestructive truckload testing. Strain gauges were placed along the height of the girder cross-section, and longitudinally and transversely across the bottom of the deck. Displacement transducers were placed to measure overall girder displacement, relative deck displacement, deck panel separation, and deck-girder connection separation. A three-dimensional finite element analysis model was created to replicate the performance of each bridge. The two new prestressed girders in bridge B-0171 strengthened the bridge considerably and increased its load carrying capacity. But the old prestressed girders in bridge B-0071 and bridge B-0171 did not show any sign of deterioration. The four sets of test data collected over a two-year period show that the age effect on structural behavior is very small for both the bridges. The deck had very little influence on the distribution of loads in the structure for these bridges. Due to low deck stiffness and incomplete connectivity, the FRP deck did little to strengthen the girders. The long term monitoring of the deck result complied with the short term testing as reported by Eder8. The finite element model closely matched with the structural components of the original bridge. The new improved model is a better representation as it was calibrated with four sets of field data collected over a period of two years. The field test data from both tests shows that the girders are simply supported on the abutment. But the girders in the model are designed as fixed end beams to have a reasonable value for the modulus of concrete used in the model. In reality it can be assumed that the support condition is between fixed and simply supported. It was also demonstrated that the deck had very little influence on the distribution of loads in the structure for these bridges. The majority of the load transfer between girders was most likely due to the diaphragms. The Impact Factor based on one set of experimental results was 1.217. However, for analysis the LRFD value of 1.33 was used. The Load Rating Factor for bridge B-0071 was 1.66 and for bridge B-0171 was 2.48 with the governing truck loading being the Design load Type Tandem. These rating factors were based on girder performance only due to insufficient deck information.

En este artículo se presentan algunas consideraciones sobre la utilización del índice de impacto como medida de calidad en la investigación. Después de hacer una referencia histórica del concepto de índice de impacto, se analizan algunos aspectos a tener en cuenta cuando se utiliza esta medida de las citaciones. También se comentan algunas críticas a su uso como parámetro de evaluación de calidad de una investigación individual o de curricula en la promoción y contratación de investigadores y en la concesión de ayudas científicas.