A new system of authorship best assessment

Luca Saba; Michele Porcu; Gianluca De Rubeis; Antonella Balestrieri; Alessandra Serra; Mauro Giovanni Carta

doi:10.1177/22799036221149840

A new system of authorship best assessment

J Public Health Res. 2023 Feb 21;12(1):22799036221149840. doi: 10.1177/22799036221149840. eCollection 2023 Jan.

Authors

Luca Saba¹, Michele Porcu¹, Gianluca De Rubeis², Antonella Balestrieri¹, Alessandra Serra¹, Mauro Giovanni Carta¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Sardegna, Italy.
² Azienda Ospedaliera San Camillo Forlanini, Roma, Lazio, Italy.

Abstract

Purpose: The standard bibliometric indexes ("m-quotient "H-," "H2-," "g-," "a-," "m-," and "r-" index) do not considered the research' position in the author list of the paper. We proposed a new methodology, System of Authorship Best Assessment (SABA), to characterize the scientific output based on authors' position.

Material and methods: Four classes S1A, S1B, S2A, and S2B include only papers where the researcher is in first, first/last, first/second/last, and first/second/second-last/last position respectively were used for the calculation of H-index and number of citations The system was tested with Noble prize winners controlled with researchers matched for H-index. The different in percentage between standard bibliometric index and S2B was calculated and compared.

Results: The percentage differences in Noble prize winners between S2B-H-index versus Global H-index and number of citations is very lower comparing with control group (median 4.15% [adjusted 95% CI, 2.54-5.30] vs 9.00 [adjusted 95% CI, 7.16-11.84], p < 0.001; average difference 8.7% vs 20.3%). All different in percentage between standard bibliometric index and S2B except two (H2- and m-index) were significantly lower among Noble prize compared with control group.

Conclusion: The SABA methodology better weight the research impact by showing that for excellent profiles the S2B is similar to global values whereas for other researchers there is a significant difference.

Keywords: Abstracting and indexing; bibliometrics.