Statistical Indicators of the Scientific Publications Importance: A Stochastic Model and Critical Look

Abstract

A model of scientific citation distribution is given. We apply it to understand the role of the Hirsch index as an indicator of scientific publication importance in Mathematics and some related fields. The proposed model is based on a generalization of such well-known distributions as geometric and Sibuya laws. Real data analysis of the Hirsch index and corresponding citation numbers is given.

Keywords

• citation distribution
• Hirsch index
• geometric distribution
• Sibuya distribution