arXiv : Biblioranking fundamental physics

Abstract Counting of number of papers, of citations and the h-index are the simplest bibliometric indices of the impact of research. We discuss some improvements. First, we replace citations with individual citations, fractionally shared among co-authors, to take into account that different papers and different fields have largely different average number of co-authors and of references. Next, we improve on citation counting applying the PageRank algorithm to citations among papers. Being time-ordered, this reduces to a weighted counting of citation descendants that we call PaperRank. We compute a related AuthorRank applying the PageRank algorithm to citations among authors. These metrics quantify the impact of an author or paper taking into account the impact of those authors that cite it. Finally, we show how self- and circular-citations can be eliminated by defining a closed market of Citation-coins. We apply these metrics to the InSpire database that covers fundamental physics, presenting results for papers, authors, journals, institutes, towns, countries for all-time and in recent time periods.