https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60757-1
Regular Article
Agent-based model for the h-index – exact solution
1
Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of
Sciences, ul. Newelska
6, 01-447
Warsaw,
Poland
2
Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of
Sciences,
International Ph.D. Studies
Program, 01-248
Warsaw,
Poland
3
Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology,
ul. Koszykowa 75, 00-662
Warsaw,
Poland
4
Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University
of Technology, ul. Koszykowa
75, 00-662
Warsaw,
Poland
a e-mail: siudem@if.pw.edu.pl
Received:
19
September
2015
Received in final form:
22
November
2015
Published online:
27
January
2016
Hirsch’s h-index is perhaps the most popular citation-based measure of scientific excellence. In 2013, Ionescu and Chopard proposed an agent-based model describing a process for generating publications and citations in an abstract scientific community [G. Ionescu, B. Chopard, Eur. Phys. J. B 86, 426 (2013)]. Within such a framework, one may simulate a scientist’s activity, and – by extension – investigate the whole community of researchers. Even though the Ionescu and Chopard model predicts the h-index quite well, the authors provided a solution based solely on simulations. In this paper, we complete their results with exact, analytic formulas. What is more, by considering a simplified version of the Ionescu-Chopard model, we obtained a compact, easy to compute formula for the h-index. The derived approximate and exact solutions are investigated on a simulated and real-world data sets.
Key words: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
© The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
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