Global informetric impact: A description and definition using bundles

Abstract

Inspired by the Lorenz curve for evenness or concentration, and the corresponding axioms, we construct a theory leading to the notion of global impact. In this theory, we construct a relation that plays the role of the Lorenz dominance order for evenness or concentration theory. The notion of global impact that we obtain is such that well-known global impact bundles such as percentiles, the cumulative number of items produced by the x most productive sources, the average production of the x most productive sources, the generalized h-and g-indices, and the highest number of citations indeed measure impact in our sense of the word.