PoP 8 new features (3): New metric hA index
Week 3 of a weekly announcement of new features of Publish or Perish version 8
On the 1st of November 2021, nearly exactly 15 years after first launching Publish or Perish, we released version 8 of the software. After two months of "soft launch", we are now ready to publicise its new features. To do so, I will post about a new feature every Thursday. If you want a complete overview have a look at this blogpost: Publish or Perish version 8.
Hardly a month goes by without a new metric being suggested in the bibliometrics literature. We therefore don’t introduce new metrics lightly in Publish or Perish. In Publish or Perish 7 we introduced the ACC [annual citation count] metric listing the number of papers with at least 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 citations per year.
In Publish or Perish 8, we introduced a new metric correcting for the age of the paper: the hA index. Created by Yves Fassin and published in the ISSI newsletter, this is a h-index with paper citations corrected by the year of publication. Details of its calculation can be found here, but in short it is the largest number of papers in the dataset that have obtained at least hA citations per year on average.
In contrast to the Publish or Perish hIa index, introduced by Harzing, Alakangas and Adams, which divides the (individual) h-index by the total number of years in the data-set, the hA index divides the citation count of each paper by the age of that paper. The hA index can easily be verified manually by sorting the results in Publish or Perish on the citations per year column (see illustration).
Illustration of the hA index
My hA index in Google Scholar is 26, which means I have 26 publications that have at least 26 citations per year. For my hA index to increase to 27, my 2015 publication Why and how does shared language affect subsidiary knowledge inflows in Journal of International Business Studies would need to increase its citations to an average of 27 citations per year.
For it to increase to 28, not only would my 2001 publication in Human Resource Management Who's in charge? need to increase its citations to an average of 28 per years, but the five preceding publications would also need to increase their citations to this same average.
The number of citations per year will decline naturally with each passing year if citations do not accrue at the same rate as before. Hence, the growth of a scholar's hA index typically declines of time and reaches a plateau for most mature scholars. Even maintaining a high hA index is not easy and is a mark of sustained scholarly impact.
Note: The metrics pane was simplified in earlier Publish or Perish versions as many users were confused by the many unfamiliar metrics. However, all metrics that were ever included in Publish or Perish are still available in the exported results. Hence, you can continue any longitudinal research projects that use these metrics.
Download Publish or Perish version 8
You can download the latest version of Publish or Perish from the following pages:
- Download for Windows
- Download for macOS
- Download for GNU/Linux (using Wine or similar)
Related blogposts
- PoP 8 new features (1): New interface
- PoP 8 new features (2): New data-source PubMed
- PoP 8 new features (3): New metric hA index
- PoP 8 new features (4): Search for free full text version
- PoP 8 new features (5): Download and export of abstracts
- PoP 8 new features (6): Improved search reports - basic or extended
- PoP 8 new features (7): Google Scholar - related works
- PoP 8 new features (8): Google Scholar - DOI extraction
- PoP 8 new features (9): Google Scholar - retrieval of citing works
- PoP 8 new features (10): Google Scholar - limitation of the number of search results
- PoP 8 new features (11): Google Scholar - include/exclude stray citations and patents
- PoP 8 new features (12): Facilitate repeated searching
- PoP 8 new features (13): Command line tools
- PoP 8 new features (14): Transparency & replicability
- PoP 8 new features (15): Training resources
Support Publish or Perish
Development of the Publish or Perish software is a volunteering effort that has been ongoing since 2006, regularly adding new features and data sources and expanding use cases and geographical distribution.
To keep Publish or Perish free (gratis) for everyone, your contribution toward our costs of hosting, bandwidth, and software development is appreciated. If you find Publish or Perish useful, then this is your chance to say "thank you" to the developers.
You can support us by buying the Publish or Perish guide or tutorial and/or through a donation. Only one user out of every five thousand contributes (that is, only 0.02% of all users!), so any support is very welcome indeed. For more detail see: Support Publish or Perish.
| Product name | Unit price | Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| PoP donation (small) | GBP 1.00 | |
| PoP donation (medium) | GBP 10.00 | |
| PoP donation (large) | GBP 50.00 | |
| PoP donation (corporate) | GBP 500.00 |
Note: all prices are in Pounds Sterling (GBP). VAT is applied as required.
Copyright © 2022 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Sat 17 Sep 2022 09:48
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
