Evolutionary Biological Data Science Laboratory

b-index (10% rate)

The b-index (Brown 2009) is designed to correct the h-index for self-citations, without actually having to check the citation records for every publication. It assumes that an author's self-citation rate is fairly consistent across publications such that, on average, a fraction k of the citations are from other authors. Assuming that citations follow a Zipfian distribution and that empirically derived estimates of the shape of this distribution are reasonable, one finds the index

$$b=hk^{\frac{3}{4}},$$

where b is an estimate of the h-index corrected for self-citations.

There are multiple ways to estimate the non-self-citation rate (k). In this case, we simply assume a self-citation rate of 10%, meaning the non-self-citation rate is 90%, or k = 0.9.

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