Scientific Production and Productivity in Curriculum Vitae Characterisation: Simple and Nested H Indices that Support Cross-Disciplinary Comparisons

In this study, I developed operational versions of Hirsch’s H index that can be applied to each researcher’s curriculum vitae (CV) to allow cross-disciplinary comparisons. The revised indices account for anomalies that potentially arise from tactical or opportunistic citation and publication behaviours by authors and editors, and can be calculated from readily available information. I split the original H index into nested indices to isolate networking activity, distinguish scientific production and productivity, and used nested Gini indices to identify intentional and successful inter-topical and inter-disciplinary research. I applied the most popular normalisations (i.e., per author and per year) using simple methodologies (i.e., least-squares linear and cubic interpolation fitting, whole-career vs. sub-periods, two-dimensional graphs) to solve empirical problems (e.g., sensitivity to citations, the “fashion” effect, attribution to disciplines, life cycle of articles) as well as open questions (e.g., the attribution of an article to a given discipline) associated with the original H index. I provided three numerical examples based on a representative heterodox, a representative orthodox multi-disciplinary, and a representative orthodox uni-disciplinary CV: the first CV includes 17 Scopus publications, and shows a highly heterodox (i.e., 5.8%), but no interdisciplinary research career, with a tiny networking component (i.e., 0.9%); the second CV includes 24 Scopus publications, and shows a slightly heterodox (i.e., 0.3%), but highly interdisciplinary (i.e., 53.9%) research career, with a small networking component (i.e., 14.3%); the third CV includes 16 Scopus publications, and shows slightly heterodox (i.e., 0.1%) and no interdisciplinary research career, with no networking component.