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Abstract We propose a scale-invariant derivative of the h-index as “h-dimension”, which is analogous to the fractal dimension of the h-index for institutional performance analysis. The design of h-dimension comes from the self-similar characteristics of the citation structure. We applied this h-dimension to data of 134 Japanese national universities and research institutes, and found well-performing medium-sized research institutes, where we identified multiple organizations related to natural disasters. This result is reasonable considering that Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes and other natural disasters. However, these characteristic institutes are screened by larger universities if we depend on the existing h-index. The scale-invariant property of the proposed method helps to understand the nature of academic activities, which must promote fair and objective evaluation of research activities to maximize intellectual, and eventually economic opportunity.

Editorial

The popularity of the use of the quartile index in various fields of knowledge is shown; the first mention dates back to the work of R. Kempton and L. Taylor on population biology, published in 1976 in the journal Nature. This index was proposed for the first time for scientometrics in 2019 by the historian A.V. Grinev from St. Petersburg. A number of improvements have been made to this index for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating the qualitative structure of publications by authors and any subjects of publication activity. It shows its significant advantage over Hirsch-like metrics and gives recommendations for its implementation in national and institutional systems for assessing the quality of publication activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El índice-h de Hirsch es un nuevo indicador bibliométrico que ha sido considerado útil para evaluar la productividad científica de investigadores individuales y revistas científicas. En este trabajo lo empleo para evaluar la productividad de las 15 universidades que actualmente son líderes de investigación en Chile. Puesto que en este último país los rankings públicos de percepción del prestigio de las universidades comienzan a ser comunes relaciono el índice-h con un par de rankings basados en la opinión que de ellas tienen tanto sus potenciales estudiantes y empleadores de sus profesionales titulados. Encontré que ambos rankings se relacionaron y lo mismo ocurrió cuando se asociaron con el índice-h. Esta asociación fue mayor para el ranking basado en la percepción de los estudiantes.The Hirsch's h-index is a new bibliometric indicator that has been considered useful to evaluate the scientific productivity of individual researchers and scientific journals. This paper uses it to evaluate the productivity of the 15 research universities of Chile. Since in Chile public rankings of perception of their universities are begining to be common, the article relates the h-index with a pair of rankings based on the prestige that the potential employers and students of the last level of secondary education have of them. I found that both rankings of perception were related and the same happened when they were associated to the h-index of Hirsch. The association was greater for the ranking based on the perception by potential students at those universities.

The Hirsch's h-index is a new bibliometric indicator that has been considered useful to evaluate the scientific productivity of individual researchers and scientific journals. This paper uses it to evaluate the productivity of the 15 research universities of Chile. Since in Chile public rankings of perception of their universities are beginning to be common, the article relates the h-index with a pair of rankings based on the prestige that the potential employers and students of the last level of secondary education have of them. I found that both rankings of perception were related and the same happened when they were associated to the h-index of Hirsch. The association was greater for the ranking based on the perception by potential students at those universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]