Measuring co-authors' contribution to an article's visibility

Abstract

The visibility of an article depends to a large extent on its authors. We study the question how each co-author's relative contribution to the visibility of the article can be determined and quantified using an indicator, referring to such an indicator as a CAV-indicator. A two-step procedure is elaborated, whereby one first chooses an indicator (e.g. total number of citations, h-index,...) and subsequently one of two possible approaches. The case where the indicator is an h-type index is elaborated in a Lotkaian framework. Different examples illustrate the procedure and the choices involved in determining a CAV-indicator.