[Coral-List] A student's guide to the h-index

[David Blakeway]

Dear Coral List - been discussing this further with Mike & Dennis. And
slowly receiving enlightenment, so.. hope you can indulge me again.
I guess my position now is that the h-index is 'bad' in the sense that
democracy is bad, i.e. 'the worst form of government except every other
form that's been tried'
And when I actually scroll through the Google Scholar pages of coral reef
scientists I see a cascade of ideas and hard work that, well, makes me wish
I could retract this post.

BUT, it is definitely worth noting that the Hirsch 2005 paper is (imo) very
poor work. For a start, he named the index after himself. Then we learn,
from Dennis' digging, that he actually ripped the idea off without
acknowledgement (the cycling index was introduced by the high-profile
physicist Arthur Edddington, and Hirsch is a physicist - no way that's
coincidence). And how representative can it possibly be when it's all based
on a sample n=21 of, overwhelmingly, white middle-aged American male elite
physicists who've probably known since age three how special they are, and
who were selected for the analysis *because *they had a stellar list of
highly-cited publications? That sounds like trying to characterise the reef
fish community by examining the pack of 100kg *Caranx* circling out front.
Grrr.

On Fri, Jan 1, 2021 at 5:15 AM Dennis Hubbard <dennis.hubbard at oberlin.edu>
wrote:

> This has been an interesting thread, so I went back and looked at some of
> the discussions about its use in cycling - where it was apparently created.
> For those who have not tracked this down, "h" appears to be a number that
> states "some rider" with a given h-score has ridden that number of rides of
> that length. By way of example, a rider who has ridden 70 rides of 70 miles
> would have an "h-score" of 70 - certainly better than a rider who has
> ridden 2 rides of 2 miles. The problem is that, because the number is
> non-dimensional, a rider who has ridden 70 rides of 70 miles has the same
> score as a rider who has ridden 70 rides of 70 km (example in Google). And,
> by extension, a rider who has ridden 70 rides of 70 cm will have the same
> score as one who has ridden 70 rides of 70 km. If I apply this analogy
> correctly to our discussion, a rider who rides 2 rides of 2500 km will
> receive no merit badge and, therefore has no standing compared to the one
> who rode 70 rides of 70 m.
>
> More to the point, consider the poor graduate student who has published
> only their second paper, but it is cited by 25,000 readers. (S)he either
> doesn't qualify in this ranking... or would receive a maximum score of 2
> (i.e., the same as published only two papers with two readers each). At the
> other extreme, some prolific author (but whose research was so egregious
> that their 2000 papers were typically cited in cited in 2000 rebuttals
> would be an "h-god". If I am correct, Mike's statement, "Don't we conclude
> from your two points that the h-index is a big big problem?" ranks near
> infinity when it comes to an h-ranking?
>
> Dennis
>
> On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 10:15 AM David Blakeway via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Mike and all,
>> I'd like to learn more about how academia is done. As an outsider, no
>> doubt
>> my understanding is very incomplete.
>>
>> Perhaps I am focusing excessively on the h-index. And for sure that's
>> partly because my own h-index, if I had one, would be so tiny I'd be
>> ashamed to display it in public (but I don't want one so that's ok).
>>
>> BUT, reflecting on your two earlier points, which you said are more
>> threatening to scholarship than the h-index:
>> Your first point indicates that bureaucracy is likely to misuse the
>> h-index, therefore isn't the h-index a big problem?
>> Your second point I understood to mean gaming the system to artificially
>> inflate authorship. Doesn't that equate to gaming the h-index, therefore
>> isn't the h-index a big problem?
>>
>> Don't we conclude from your two points that the h-index is a big big
>> problem?
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 4:09 AM Risk, Michael <riskmj at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi David.
>> >
>> > Don’t mean to be a bubble-burster…I am just a cynical old guy living in
>> > the forest.
>> >
>> > There are tons of problems with science, and only some of them are
>> > self-inflicted. My pet peeve is…did you know that “manager” is now the
>> > world’s most common profession? And the very idea that science can be
>> > “managed” is repulsive. Doesn’t stop them trying.
>> >
>> > Way back when,. Canada used to pride itself on our granting system.
>> NSERC
>> > grants were restricted to 4 pages, and were reviewed by a committee of
>> > peers. The camel got its nose under the tent flap. First, a government
>> rep
>> > sat in…next, the length limit was raised…then more managers...20 years
>> down
>> > the road, we are not much better than the soul-crushing NSF system. And
>> I
>> > don’t think we should attribute any higher motives to these managers
>> than
>> > we would to any other group. They will protect themselves.
>> >
>> > When we get involved with grading or ranking our colleagues, we really
>> > need objective criteria, or seemingly objective. Otherwise, it’s
>> > opinions-and they are like noses, everybody has one.
>> >
>> > In short, I see h-indices as one tool, to be used intelligently. Much
>> > better, of course, is to go to the library and READ the papers on which
>> > decisions will be based. I will spare you the story of the guy at our
>> place
>> > who MADE UP a buncha papers on the assumption no one would check. (I
>> wanted
>> > to fire his butt-the Dean said the paperwork would kill us and besides 4
>> > more years and he’d retire.)
>> >
>> > #2 is a direct result, not so much of h-scores, but of the importance we
>> > place on authorships. That’s as it should be, and that’s why this recent
>> > hydra-like trend is so dismaying. All I will say is-have some
>> self-respect.
>> > Don’t do this. Because, as you say, it’s obvious what’s going on.
>> >
>> > Mike
>> >
>> > On Dec 30, 2020, at 2:14 PM, David Blakeway <
>> > fathom5marineresearch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Mike,
>> > Thank you! (for bursting my bubble :) I have this delusion I see the
>> > problem, but it's only 'a' problem.
>> > Regarding your point 1, nasty me thinks 'yeah, managers, my second
>> > least-favourite species after marketers' Nice me thinks 'they are
>> > well-meaning, just trying to advance the department/school/university
>> > according to current best practice'
>> > To point 2 it's 'come on, stop this joke, we all see what you're doing'
>> > and 'worldwide collaboration is exactly what we need right now'
>> > What do you mean when you say you 'despair of solutions'?
>> > And isn't your point 2 a direct consequence of the h-index?
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>
>
> --
> Dennis Hubbard - Emeritus Professor: Dept of Geology-Oberlin College
> Oberlin OH 44074
> (440) 935-4014
>
> * "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
>  Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"
>