Measuring Influence in Science: Standing on the Shoulders of Which Giants?

32 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2017 Last revised: 2 Feb 2018

See all articles by Antonin Macé

Antonin Macé

Paris School of Economics, CNRS and ENS

Date Written: February 1, 2018

Abstract

I study the measurement of the influence of scientists based on bibliographic data. I propose a new measure that accounts for indirect influence and allows to compare scientists across different fields of science. By contrast, common measures of influence that “count citations”, such as the h-index, are unable to satisfy either of these two properties. I use the axiomatic method in two opposite ways: to highlight the two limitations of citation-counting schemes and their independence, and to carefully justify the assumptions made in the construction of the proposed measure.

Keywords: intellectual influence, network centrality , comparability across fields

JEL Classification: C43, D85, A11, A12

Suggested Citation

Macé, Antonin, Measuring Influence in Science: Standing on the Shoulders of Which Giants? (February 1, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3065192 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3065192

Antonin Macé (Contact Author)

Paris School of Economics, CNRS and ENS ( email )

France

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/antoninmace/home

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