High-ranked citations percentage as an indicator of publications quality

Abstract

A publications quality indicator called high-ranked citations percentage (HCP) is based on an idea that good papers are well cited. HCP was computed as a portion of cumulative citations concerning well cited papers from the total number of citations of an individual. The h-index was used to separate the well cited papers from the others. A testing dataset was composed of researchers who worked in various fields and at various institutions. Their research outputs were characterized by the h-index (h), the number of papers (P), the number of citations (C) and self-citations taken from the Web of Science (WoS). Unlike the h-index, HCP as a relative indicator does not underestimate researchers with shorter or interrupted research careers and does not depend on research fields. The scatter plot of HCP and the h index was employed for ranking of individuals into 4 groups according to its quadrants. The best performing authors had HCP above 70% and h above 15.