Three new papers in the e-journal Cybermetrics

[Isidro F. Aguillo]

Papers recently published in the Vol. 13 of the electronic Journal 
Cybermetrics:

Evolution of the formal quality indicators of the Web spaces of 
University Libraries in Spain
    José Antonio González-Lucio, Cristina Faba-Pérez, Felix de Moya 
Anegón, Purificación Moscoso-Castro
Cybermetrics, vol. 13: paper 1
http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v13i1p1.pdf

The need to measure and assess the electronic information made available 
by the Web has given rise to the development of indicators that can be 
used to evaluate the final quality of this information. Web spaces of 
the informational units, which include virtual university libraries, are 
prime candidates for such a process of assessment. The present study has 
a look at the quality of the informational services supplied by virtual 
university libraries in Spain, adopting as the variable of analysis the 
evolution that certain quality indicators of a formal character have 
exhibited over an exemplary period of six months. The interpretation of 
our results makes manifest an overall satisfactory evolution, though the 
breakdown by regions or Autonomous Communities of Spain reveals 
deficiencies in some cases.

Handling self-citations using Google Scholar
    Francisco M. Couto, Catia Pesquita, Tiago Grego, and Paulo Verissimo
Cybermetrics, vol. 13: paper 2
http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v13i1p2.pdf

The increasing use of citation impact indexes for evaluation and 
comparison not only of individual researchers but also of institutions, 
universities and even countries has prompted the development of new 
citation metrics. Currently, the number of publications and citations is 
widely accepted as an easy and balanced way to compare scientists. 
Calculation of such statistics depends on the availability of a 
comprehensive database of publications and their citations. Google 
Scholar aims at providing such a service and is currently the most 
widely used freely available search engine for scientific and academic 
literature. However, the citations generally used to calculate citation 
statistics include self-citations, which deviates from the intention of 
using citations as a reflection of research impact.
To the best of our knowledge, there are no available tools for 
calculating citation statistics that account for self-citations. We 
present a web-based service CIDS (Citation Impact Discerning 
Self-citations), that takes into account self-citations. An assessment 
of CIDS in a research team has shown that both the number of citations 
and the h-index is sensitive to self-citations at the individual level, 
the h-index increasing 24% on average when considering them. However, 
self-citation is highly variable among individuals and its contribution 
highly variable. We conclude that at the individual and research unit 
level, self-citations are not dismissible when calculating citation 
statistics. Even the h-index is influenced by self-citation and 
comparing individuals without taking them in account can produce 
misleading results.
CIDS is available at: http://xldb.fc.ul.pt/tools/cids/.

The h-i index: A proposed new metric of individual scientific output
    David Navon
Cybermetrics, vol. 13: paper 3
http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v13i1p3.pdf

It is proposed that since scientific output of individual researchers is 
not unidimensional, its popular measure, /h/-index, should be augmented 
with a measure of the average impact of the /h/ top cited publications, 
/i/, that is basically independent of /h/. It is argued that the two 
metrics, /h/ and /i/, reflect two separate facets of scientific output, 
the latter being little affected by seniority.

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Isidro F. Aguillo, HonPhD
Cybermetrics Lab
CCHS - CSIC
Albasanz, 26-28, 3C1. 28037 Madrid. Spain

Ph. 91-602 2890. Fax: 91-602 2971

isidro.aguillo @ cchs.csic.es
www. webometrics.info
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