A disadvantage of h-type indices for comparing the citation impact of two researchers

Abstract

We show that the rank frequency functions of two researchers usually intersect. As a consequence of this, different h-type indices can conclude on different impact judgements of the two researchers. Also in this paper a new indicator is proposed: the average number of citations per paper in the papers whose ranks are smaller than or equal to the intersection point of their two rank frequency functions. The theoretical derivations are illustrated using an empirical example.