Title: An aggregated index for assessment of the scientific output of researchers

Authors: Rasim Alguliyev; Ramiz Aliguliyev; Tahmasib Fataliyev; Rahila Hasanova

Addresses: Institute of Information Technology, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, 9, B. Vahabzade Street, AZ1141 Baku, Azerbaijan ' Institute of Information Technology, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, 9, B. Vahabzade Street, AZ1141 Baku, Azerbaijan ' Institute of Information Technology, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, 9, B. Vahabzade Street, AZ1141 Baku, Azerbaijan ' Institute of Information Technology, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, 9, B. Vahabzade Street, AZ1141 Baku, Azerbaijan

Abstract: A variety of indices based on different strategies have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the scientific output of researchers. The majority of those indices were designed to quantify the production of researchers and the impact of their publications. Currently, finding a suitable index among existing indices or developing a new index for evaluating the quality of research is a challenging task for the scientific community. The evaluation of the scientific performance of researchers should rely upon a proper aggregation of reliable and valid indices. However, very few studies have been reported on aggregating different indices to possibly generate better results. In this paper, a weighted index to combine the results from individual indices is proposed. The proposed index utilises a policy of consensus that assigns the weights to indices and linearly combines them. We evaluate and compare the weighted consensus index with the 25 indices. Experimental results on two citation data demonstrate that the weighted index may serve as a supplement to h-index and its variants to better draw the evaluation results.

Keywords: Hirsch type indices; aggregate index; positionally weighted index; optimisation models; output assessment; scientific output; research output.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKMS.2015.071650

International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies, 2015 Vol.6 No.1, pp.31 - 62

Received: 21 Feb 2014
Accepted: 12 Apr 2015
Published online: 09 Sep 2015 *

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