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Three novel indirect indicators for the assessment of papers and authors based on generations of citations

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An Erratum to this article was published on 25 February 2016

Abstract

A new indirect indicator is introduced for the assessment of scientific publications. The proposed indicator (\(fp^{k}\)-index) takes into account both the direct and indirect impact of scientific publications and their age. The indicator builds on the concept of generations of citations and acts as a measure of the accumulated impact of each scientific publication. A number of cases are examined that demonstrate the way the indicator behaves under well defined conditions in a Paper-Citation graph, like when a paper is cited by a highly cited paper, when cycles exist and when self-citations and chords are examined. Two new indicators for the assessment of authors are also proposed (fa-index and fas-index) that utilize the \(fp^{k}\)-index values of the scientific publications included in the Publication Record of an author. Finally, a comparative study of the \(fp^{k}\) and \(fa^{k}\) indices and a list of well known direct (Number of Citations, Mean number of citations, Contemporary h-index) and indirect (PageRank, SCEAS) indicators is presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia St, 54636, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Eleni Fragkiadaki & Georgios Evangelidis

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  1. Eleni Fragkiadaki
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  2. Georgios Evangelidis
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Correspondence to Eleni Fragkiadaki.

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Fragkiadaki, E., Evangelidis, G. Three novel indirect indicators for the assessment of papers and authors based on generations of citations. Scientometrics 106, 657–694 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1802-4

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