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Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact

The impact factor (IF) of scientific journals has acquired a major role in the evaluations of the output of scholars, departments and whole institutions. Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pan, Raj Kumar, Fortunato, Santo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017244/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814674
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep04880
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author Pan, Raj Kumar
Fortunato, Santo
author_facet Pan, Raj Kumar
Fortunato, Santo
author_sort Pan, Raj Kumar
collection PubMed
description The impact factor (IF) of scientific journals has acquired a major role in the evaluations of the output of scholars, departments and whole institutions. Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one is interested in assessing the impact of individuals, rather than papers. Here we introduce Author Impact Factor (AIF), which is the extension of the IF to authors. The AIF of an author A in year t is the average number of citations given by papers published in year t to papers published by A in a period of Δt years before year t. Due to its intrinsic dynamic character, AIF is capable to capture trends and variations of the impact of the scientific output of scholars in time, unlike the h-index, which is a growing measure taking into account the whole career path.
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spelling pubmed-40172442014-05-13 Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact Pan, Raj Kumar Fortunato, Santo Sci Rep Article The impact factor (IF) of scientific journals has acquired a major role in the evaluations of the output of scholars, departments and whole institutions. Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one is interested in assessing the impact of individuals, rather than papers. Here we introduce Author Impact Factor (AIF), which is the extension of the IF to authors. The AIF of an author A in year t is the average number of citations given by papers published in year t to papers published by A in a period of Δt years before year t. Due to its intrinsic dynamic character, AIF is capable to capture trends and variations of the impact of the scientific output of scholars in time, unlike the h-index, which is a growing measure taking into account the whole career path. Nature Publishing Group 2014-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4017244/ /pubmed/24814674 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep04880 Text en Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The images in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the image credit; if the image is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the image. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
spellingShingle Article
Pan, Raj Kumar
Fortunato, Santo
Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title_full Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title_fullStr Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title_full_unstemmed Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title_short Author Impact Factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
title_sort author impact factor: tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4017244/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814674
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep04880
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