Truex D, Cuellar M, Takeda H "Assessing Scholarly Influence: Using the Hirsch Indices to Reframe the Discourse" Journal of the Assoc for Information Sys 10(7):560-594, 2009

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Addresses: dtruex at gsu.edu, mcullar at nccu.edu, htakeda at cis.gsu.edu  

TITLE : Assessing Scholarly Influence: Using the Hirsch Indices to Reframe 
the Discourse 

Author(s): Truex D (Truex, Duane)1, Cuellar M (Cuellar, Michael)2, Takeda H 
(Takeda, Hirotoshi)1 
 
Source: JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS    Volume: 10    
Issue: 7    Pages: 560-594    Published: 2009    

Times Cited: 0     References: 81     Citation Map      

Abstract: 
This study is part of a program aimed at creating measures enabling a 
fairer and more complete assessment of a scholar's contribution to a field, 
thus bringing greater rationality and transparency to the promotion and 
tenure process. It finds current approaches toward the evaluation of 
research productivity to be simplistic, atheoretic, and biased toward 
reinforcing existing reputation and power structures. This study examines 
the use of the Hirsch family of indices, a robust and theoretically 
informed metric, as an addition to prior approaches to assessing the 
scholarly influence of IS researchers. It finds that while the top tier 
journals are important indications of a scholar's impact, they are neither 
the only nor, indeed, the most important sources of scholarly influence. 
Other ranking studies, by narrowly bounding the venues included in those 
studies, distort the discourse and effectively privilege certain venues by 
declaring them to be more highly influential than warranted. The study 
identifies three different categories of scholars: those who publish 
primarily in North American journals, those who publish primarily in 
European journals, and a transnational set of authors who publish in both 
geographies. Excluding the transnational scholars, for the scholars who 
published in these journal sets during the period of this analysis, we find 
that North American scholars tend to be more influential than European 
scholars, on average. We attribute this difference to a difference in the 
publication culture of the different geographies. This study also suggests 
that the influence of authors who publish in the European journal set is 
concentrated at a moderate level of influence, while the influence of those 
who publish in the North American journal set is dispersed between those 
with high influence and those with relatively low influence. Therefore, to 
be a part of the top European scholar list requires a higher level of 
influence than to be a part of the top North American scholar list. 

Reprint Address: Truex, D (reprint author), Georgia State Univ, J Mack 
Robinson Coll Business, Atlanta, GA 30303 USA  

Addresses: 
1. Georgia State Univ, J Mack Robinson Coll Business, Atlanta, GA 30303 USA 
2. N Carolina Cent Univ, Durham, NC USA   
E-mail Addresses: dtruex at gsu.edu, mcullar at nccu.edu, htakeda at cis.gsu.edu  

publisher: ASSOC INFORMATION SYSTEMS, GEORGIA STATE UNIV, 35 BROAD STREET, 
STE 916-917, ATLANTA, GA 30303 USA  
IDS Number: 496KN  
ISSN: 1536-9323