Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29621316›Full record

ArticlePloS one2018

Fair ranking of researchers and research teams.

Václav Vavryčuk

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
17citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
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  14. What Is Wrong With the Current Evaluative Bibliometrics?Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2021
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Václav VavryčukInstitute of Geophysics, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.ORCID 0000-0003-3962-2678

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The main drawback of ranking of researchers by the number of papers, citations or by the Hirsch index is ignoring the problem of distributing authorship among authors in multi-author publications. So far, the single-author or multi-author publications contribute to the publication record of a researcher equally. This full counting scheme is apparently unfair and causes unjust disproportions, in particular, if ranked researchers have distinctly different collaboration profiles. These disproportions are removed by less common fractional or authorship-weighted counting schemes, which can distribute the authorship credit more properly and suppress a tendency to unjustified inflation of co-authors. The urgent need of widely adopting a fair ranking scheme in practise is exemplified by analysing citation profiles of several highly-cited astronomers and astrophysicists. While the full counting scheme often leads to completely incorrect and misleading ranking, the fractional or authorship-weighted schemes are more accurate and applicable to ranking of researchers as well as research teams. In addition, they suppress differences in ranking among scientific disciplines. These more appropriate schemes should urgently be adopted by scientific publication databases as the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) or the Scopus (Elsevier).

Indexed as

BibliometricsResearch PersonnelHumansModels, TheoreticalPublishingScholarly Communication

Identifiers

PMID29621316
PMCPMC5886690

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.