Two new discipline-independent indices to quantify individual's scientific research output

Interest in quantitative measurement of scientific output has been steadily growing because of increasing needs in the evaluation of candidates for new positions and promotions in academic careers. Recently, a new index H was proposed; it is based on an hyperbolic relationship between the number of citations and the number of papers of a given investigator, which intersects with the equality straight line. The crossing point gives the number of papers that received at least H references in a predetermined period of time. Such index neglects the contribution of the less cited papers and depends strongly on the discipline. Herein, using Hirsch's crossing point idea, we propose two new normalized indices, selectivity S and amplitude A, that are independent on the discipline and that take into account the whole spectrum of published and cited papers. The proposed method was applied to 100 scientists using information obtained from SCOPUS. The potential function appeared as the best fit to the data. Correlation coefficients were always high (r = 0.79 ± 0.11). Most of the authors displayed a marked selectivity because a typical researcher concentrates only on a single subject or perhaps a few while a wide reach did not predominate. In conclusion, these parameters are proposed as a way to complement the scientific evaluation process of a candidate