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The Prestige of Social Scientists in Spain and France: An Examination of Their h-Index Values Using Scopus and Google Scholar

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Abstract

We analyze the prestige of 1,500 scholars in economics, sociology, and management who have Spanish and French institutional affiliations operationalized by their h-index in Scopus and Google Scholar. We use a negative binomial count model to examine how some individual factors affect the h-index from both databases. The results show a non-monotonic relationship between the researchers’ career length and their h-index. There is a positive and statistically significant relationship between total research output and the h-index. The share of publications in English over total publications has also a positive and statistically significant effect on the h-index, except in a single case, while the share of publications in other foreign languages does not have such effect. Finally, we found that the effects of the number of citations received by documents in English (international impact) and by those in the vernacular language (local or regional impact) on the h-index vary according to the database, the country, and the discipline in question.

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Notes

  1. While GS data for individual scientists may not be as comprehensive as the list of publications in a CV, in most cases the coverage is almost complete as shown by García Pérez (2010) for the case of four Spanish psychologists.

  2. The AERES has been replaced by the HCERES (Haut Conseil de l'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur) from whose website (http://www.hceres.fr) we obtained the reports for classifying the French doctoral schools.

  3. For instance, in some cases, the same researcher publishes with a double surname in Spanish journals and with a single surname in foreign journals.

  4. Besides, in some local journals, the titles of published articles appear both in English and in the vernacular language; and both could be retrieved by GS as individual entries. In these cases, we consolidated the entries, assigning the language of full-text publication to the article. In contrast, when complete versions of the same article were published in English and in the vernacular language, we took them as separate entries.

  5. The number of observations is slightly less than 250 in some disciplines because a few social scientists do not have publications (articles, books or chapters) in their GS research output.

  6. The increasing importance of the “publish or perish” imperative, particularly in journals published in English, is considered by some authors as leading to changes in research agendas, especially against those of a more contextualized (local or regional) nature that are deemed relevant for scientists in non-Anglophone and developing countries (Bianco et al. 2016).

  7. It could also be contended that more senior researchers have made many publications not detected by GS. Nevertheless, books and chapter with even minimum impact may indeed be captured by GS. If a book or chapter is cited in the full text of a GS-indexed document, then GS retrieves it as a “citation”, and the document thus appears as an entry in the author’s research output generated by the Publish or Perish software.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CENTRUM Graduate Business School, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Jr. Daniel Alomía Robles Nº 125, Urbanización Los Álamos de Monterrico – Surco, Lima, Peru

    Marcelo P. Dabós

  2. Facultad de Ciencias Económica, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. Córdoba 2122, C1120AAQ, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ernesto R. Gantman

  3. Escuela de Posgrado en Negocios, Universidad de Belgrano, Zabala 1837, piso 12, C1426DQG, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ernesto R. Gantman

  4. Departamento de Sociología, Facultad CC. Económicas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Campus de Cantoblanco, c/ Francisco, Tomás y Valiente 5, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez

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  1. Marcelo P. Dabós
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  2. Ernesto R. Gantman
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  3. Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Marcelo P. Dabós.

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Appendix: Institutions List

Appendix: Institutions List

Spain

Universities: Autónoma de Barcelona, Autónoma de Madrid, Barcelona, Carlos III, Complutense, Granada, Pompeu Fabra, País Vasco, Valencia, Zaragoza.

Business Schools: ESADE, Instituto de Empresa, IESE.

France

Universities: Aix Marseille, Auvergne, Bordeaux, Caen, Cergy-Pontoise, Dauphine, Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier, Nantes, Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris 2 Assas, Paris 4 Sorbonne, París 7 Diderot, Paris 8 Vincennes, Paris Est, Paris 10 Nanterre, Paris 13 Nord, Pau, Reims, Rennes 1, Rennes 2, Rouen, Toulouse 1, Toulouse 2, Tours Rabelais.

Business Schools and other institutions: CNAM, Ecole Polytechnique, ESCP Paris, EHESS, ENS, ESECC, HEC, INSEAD, SCIPO.

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Dabós, M.P., Gantman, E.R. & Fernández Rodríguez, C.J. The Prestige of Social Scientists in Spain and France: An Examination of Their h-Index Values Using Scopus and Google Scholar. Minerva 57, 47–66 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-018-9358-0

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