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Record W4409213925 · doi:10.1080/03155986.2025.2485795

Dynamic analysis of the time-dependent progress of h-index

2025· article· en· W4409213925 on OpenAlexafffundvenue
Mahmut Parlar

Bibliographic record

VenueINFOR Information Systems and Operational Research · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
Topicscientometrics and bibliometrics research
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsIndex (typography)Computer scienceWorld Wide Web

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The h-index is a single-number metric that combines the effect of a researcher’s productivity and impact to measure her research ‘excellence.’ Google Scholar offers a free service where authors can check their record of citations, h-index and i10-index values. This paper employs dynamic analysis and attempts to shed some light on the reasons why h-index grows slowly. We first present a deterministic model where a closed-form expression of the h-index is found as a function of the rate of citations received, and the time since the author’s first publication. Next, we present a stochastic model where the rate of citations is a discrete random variable. For this case, we determine the probability density function of the random h-index using probability generating functions. We show that when the citation arrival rate is an affine linear function of time, the h-index always grows linearly in time. Finally, we consider the more general case of citation arrivals varying over time. For this case, simulation analysis demonstrates that as the variability increases, we find a decline in the h-index. We also find that when variability is low, the simulated h-index values move in parallel with the theoretical results.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaBibliometrics
Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Simulation or modelinglow
gptBibliometricsMetaresearch
Domain: Evaluation · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Observationalhigh
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.027
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.010
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Bibliometrics, Scholarly communication
Consensus categoriesBibliometrics
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.568
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0270.010
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0390.107
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.257
GPT teacher head0.556
Teacher spread0.299 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Labeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.

BibliometricsMetaresearch

The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.

Study designSimulation or modeling · Observational
DomainEvaluation
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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