Date of Award

11-29-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Information Science

First Advisor

Daniel Berleant

Abstract

In academic research, the h-index has gained prominence as a useful metric for gauging the impact and productivity of researchers. This thesis seeks to provide a general overview of the h-index by providing information on the positive applications that the h-index utilizes, as well as the faults and limitations that diminish its utility. This thesis aims to combat the bias of hyper-authorship, which inherently inflates researchers' h-indexes by disproportionately attributing credit to individuals in multi-author publications, as well as provide other indices that could prove to be a possible replacement index or to be used as a basis for creating new and better indices in the future. Moreover, this work proposes the introduction of the Minton-Index, a nuanced adaptation of the H-Index that stratifies citation impact into three categories—high, middle, and low—based on the number of citations a researcher garners relative to their position in the authorship of scholarly publications. By doing so, the Minton-Index aims to provide a more balanced and context-sensitive measure of an individual's academic influence.

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