A Comparative Study of H-Index and FWCI in Evaluation of Researchers' Scientific Productions Case Study: Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization

The present research aims to identify the usefulness of the FWCI in evaluating the research activities of the researchers of the Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization. In addition, the comparison of different subject fields of the organization in terms of the FWCI scores and also the comparison of the researchers' FWCI score of the organization with their H-index have been among other goals.

The current research was conducted with a scientometric approach and using the citation analysis method. The research community consists of 13,066 international articles from 1,589 researchers of the Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization, whose data was extracted from the Scopus database and the Scientometric System of the organization. For the current research, only those researchers who simultaneously had an H-index of 1 and whose articles also had the FWC score (1589 people in total) were extracted from this collection and their data for this study. Were analyzed. The calculation of the average FWCI of the researchers was based solely on the articles with the mentioned score, and the articles without this score were excluded from the scope of the review. Data analysis was done using Excel and SPSS software.

The findings of the research show that in the investigated period, an average of 8 articles were published by each researcher, and these articles received a total of 206,175 citations. The average H-index of these researchers was 4 and their average FWCI score was 0.398. The highest score obtained in the FWCI index was 9.85. Researchers with the rank of professor and assistant professor have equally obtained an average of 0.46 in this index, and researchers with the rank of associated professor have also obtained a score of 0.42. The average of this index for all eleven subject groups is less than 1, and at the same time, the subject group of forest and pasture and natural resources with a score of 0.61 is higher than the other groups and the subject group of education is lower than the other groups with a score of 0.35. At the same time, the subject group of forest and pasture is ranked fourth in the H-index with an average of 4.07. The results also show that there is no direct relationship between the researchers' H-index and their FWCI scores as a whole, or such a relationship is very weak. According to the findings of the research, in some areas (such as agricultural biotechnology), a higher average H-index does not necessarily mean a higher quality of the articles, and the weighted subject average of these articles is at a lower level compared to their peers globally. On the contrary, in some areas such as soil protection, water, and watershed management, although it has a lower H-index average, it has far better conditions in terms of FWCI average score.

In total, the score of the organization's researchers in the FWCI is much lower than the global average, both in general and in terms of subject groups. In addition, despite the lack of wide differences between FWCI and H-indexes, using FWCI in evaluating the articles of the organization's researchers can be more reliable.