Power of Citation__________________________________________________________________________________________
The "Power of Citation index (POC-index)" is a new indicator to measure publication quality of a researcher, it is defined by Dr Dieter TRAU as:
Ci = N POC
Total number of publications 12 month ago: N
Total number of citations today: Ci
Power of citation index: POC
The POC-index can be any number between 0 and probably 4. The power of citation "POC" is a measure for the quality of publications. To reach a high power of citations all publications need to be of high quality and should receive a high number of citations.
The power of citations measures the overall quality of the work of a researcher. A researcher who publishes a high number of papers but only a few of then receive high citations will get a poor POC-index. A researcher who publishes a smaller number of papers but all are of high quality will receive a good POC-index.
The indicator was created to promote quality publications rather than high number of publications. Poor publications only waste resources of the scientific community (e.g., such as review time, space in journals) and should be discouraged.
The power of citation indicator does NOT measure impact of a researcher in his area; impact is better measured by the h-index. However a researcher with a very good age index may have a very large number of papers which were never cited and may have only average POC-index. Also the h-index is not applicable to junior researches because it needs many years to built up a good age index; wherein the POC-index is applicable also to researchers who published only a small number of papers.
"One" can be considered as a very poor POC-index, suggesting the publications only received self citations.
"Two" can be considered as a very good POC-index, it is very difficult to maintain a POC index of 2 over a long time period.
A number larger than two can be considered as outstanding POC-index, in particular for researchers with more than 20 papers
Examples:
1) A postdoc has published 3 papers during his PhD research; last paper published more than 12 month ago and the 3 papers received a total number of 16 citations, his POC-index is 2.5, very good.
2) Another postdoc also has 3 publications, but only 5 citations, his POC-index will be 1.5, poor to average.
3) An Assistant Prof has published 18 papers and received 423 citations, his POC-index is 2.1, very good.
4) An Associate Prof has published 182 papers and received 515 citations, his POC-index is 1.2, very poor.
However the Associate Prof may have a good h-index and created impact in his area.
Indicator created by Dr Trau, Jan 2005, for my own use; with the goal to maintain a POC-index of 2 or better.
Published on web 10 April 2006
Dieter TRAU
Singapore April, 2006