H-Classics: characterizing the concept of citation classics through H-index

Abstract

Citation classics identify those highly cited papers which are an important reference point in a research field. To identify a paper as a citation classic we have to fix a citation threshold value. Usually, this threshold value should not be the same for all research fields because each field presents its respective citation pattern. Studies of citation classics in the literature define particular criteria and methods to set citation thresholds, which are often set arbitrarily and designed ad-hoc, and do not allow the scientific community to validate and compare their results. In this paper we introduce the concept of H-Classics to overcome this problem and provide scientific community a standardization of key constructs. We present a new and systematic method to identify citation classics. This identification method of highly cited papers is based on the H-index and thank to the properties of H-index it is sensitive to the own characteristics of any research discipline and also its evolution. Therefore, the concept of H-Classics allows to systematize search procedure of citation classics for any field of research.

The early adulthood of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management: A literature review 2005–2014

“…Tables 9 and 10 show the articles that comprise APJM's h-core in each sub-period. The h-core of a particular set of articles, also known as the h-classics (Martinez et al, 2014), is comprised of the h highly cited papers with more than h direct (first generation) citations received. 8 APJM's h-core for the 2005-2009 period is comprised of 37 articles (about 27% of the articles published in the period that involve almost 2/3 of total citations counts), while the journal's h-core for 2009-2014 involves 24 articles (10% of published articles representing more than 30% of total citation counts).…”

Scientific Production and Productivity in Curriculum Vitae Characterisation: Simple and Nested H Indices that Support Cross-Disciplinary Comparisons

“…In particular, linear interpolation will emphasize net citations above the minimum required by the original H index (i.e., the linear index values are likely to be larger than the original H index values), whereas cubic interpolation will de-emphasize them. See Martinez et al (2014) for an application of the H index to highly cited papers. For this reason, I will name the four cases that I study total production (i.e., a linear interpolation applied to production), total core production (i.e., a cubic interpolation applied to production), average productivity (i.e., a linear interpolation applied to productivity), and average core productivity (i.e., a cubic interpolation applied to productivity).…”

Exploring a prototype framework of web-based and peer-reviewed “European Educational Research Quality Indicators” (EERQI)

“…Barnett, Park, Jiang, Tang, & Aguillo 2014;Cerchiello & Giudici 2014;Hjørland, Nielsen, & Høyrup 2014;Martínez, Herrera, López-Gijón, & Herrera-Viedma 2014). An important development is search engines that automatically use various types of administrative characteristics such as bibliometric characteristics (e.g., author, title of document, title of journal or book, volume number and pages of specific articles).…”