Rationale and Objectives
h -Index has been proposed as a useful bibliometric measure for quantifying research productivity. In this current study, we analyzed h -indices of editorial board members of Radiology journals and tested the hypothesis that editorial board members of Radiology journals with higher impact factors (IF) have higher h -indices.
Materials and Methods
Sixty-two Radiology journals with IF >1 were included. Editorial board members were identified using the journals’ websites. Editors’ affiliations and research fields of interest were used to distinguish investigators with similar names. Bibliometric indices including number of publications, total citations, citations per publication, and h -index for each editorial board member were obtained using the Web of Science database. Chi-square or Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to test for differences in bibliographic measures or demographics between groups.
Results
Among the editorial boards of 62 journals, the median [interquartile range] board h -index was 26 [18, 31] and had 36 [17, 56] members. The median journal IF was 2.27 [1.74, 3.31]. We identified a total of 2204 distinct editors; they had a median [interquartile range] h -index of 23 [13, 35], 120 [58, 215] total publications, 1938 [682, 4634] total citations, and an average of 15.7 [9.96, 24.8] citations per publication. The boards of journals with IF above the median had significantly higher h -indices ( P = .002), total publications ( P = .01), and total and average citations (both any [ P = .003, .009] and nonself-citations [ P = .001, .002]) than journals below the median.
Conclusions
Our data indicate that board members of Radiology journals with higher IF have greater h -indices compared to lower IF journals.
Introduction
Scientific productivity of scholars has been traditionally assessed based on simple measurements such as total number of publications. To date, these measurements continue to play an important role in comparing scientific accomplishments among faculty members, and in their evaluation and consideration for promotion or tenure. This method of evaluating research productivity is not precise enough and does not account for the scientific impact of the counted publications. To overcome such challenges, other methods of evaluating scientists have been proposed . In 2005, J. E. Hirsch described h -index as a measure to quantify research productivity of an individual researcher . Since its introduction, h -index has received a great amount of acceptability. It was originally used among physicists , but is now being applied to measure scientific performance of researchers and faculty members in many fields of science, including several medical disciplines .
According to the definition, a researcher has an h -index of h if he or she has h publications that have been cited at least h times each . For example, an author of 10 papers that have been cited 10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 4, 4, 1, and 0 times respectively, has an h -index of six (six papers cited six times or more). So, it has the advantage of taking into account total publications of a researcher and his or her citations at the same time.
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Methods
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Results
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TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics for Radiology Journals Included in the Analysis
Overall ( N = 62)
Median [IQR] or n (%) Number of editors 36[17,56] Median editor h -index 26[18,31] Impact factor 2.27[1.74,3.31] US-based journal 38(61.3)
IQR,interquartile range.
Editor h-index was considered to be the median h -index of the Journal’s editorial board members.
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TABLE 2
Descriptive Statistics for Bibliometric Characteristics of Radiology Journal Editors
Total ( N = 2204)
Median [IQR] or n (%)h -Index 23[13,35] Total publications ( N ) 120[58,215] Total citations ( N ) 1938[682,4634] Total nonself-citations ( N ) 1794[639,4341] Average citations per publications 15.7[10.0,24.8] Average nonself-citations 14.8[9.2,23.3]
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TABLE 3
Comparison of Radiology Journals by Journal Impact Factor
Below Median IF
(IF < 2.27)
( N = 31) Above Median IF
(IF ≥ 2.27)
( N = 31)P Value Number of editors ( N ) 27[16,51] 39[29,67] 0.02 Editor h -index 21[14,28] 30[22,34] 0.002 Total publications ( N ) 109[68,146] 149[116,194] 0.01 Total citations ( N ) 1592[734,2612] 3272[1893,4266] 0.003 Average citations per publication 14.9[10.4,18.3] 17.2[14.5,22.8] 0.009 Total nonself-citations (N) 1463[600,2196] 3164[1788,3926] 0.001 Average nonself-citations per publication 13.1[9.71,15.9] 16.4[13.9,21.8] 0.002
Journals were dichotomized into above median impact factor (IF) (≥2.27) and below median IF (<2.27) groups. Except for number of editors,bibliometric values for each journal were taken to be the median value of its editorial board members.
TABLE 4
Comparison Between US-Based and Non–US-Based Radiology Journals
US-Based ( N = 38) Non–US-Based ( N = 24)P Value Number of editors ( N ) 39[20,59] 29[16,55] 0.81 Editor h -index 27[21,31] 22[12,32] 0.19 Total publications (N ) 140[106,181] 113[62,182] 0.28 Total citations ( N ) 2444[1633,3676] 1690[551,3939] 0.30 Average citations per publication 17.2[14,21.8] 14.5[10.2,16.7] 0.06 Total nonself-citations ( N ) 2181[1388,3424] 1538[486,3297] 0.35 Average nonself-citations per publication 15.3[13,20] 13.1[9.73,15.9] 0.14
Except for number of editors,bibliometric values for each journal were taken to be the median value of its editorial board members.
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Discussion
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Conclusions
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Appendix 1
Included Journals
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