The Most Influential Researchers in iMetrics: A Compound Look at Influence Indicators

Using both ideational and social influences’ indicators, this study tries to identify and analyze the most influential researchers in iMetrics. To do so, the researchers used a combination of H family indexes (h-index, g-index, and contemporary h-index) and co-authorship centralities (degree, betweenness, and closeness) for calculating ideational and social influences, respectively.
The study uses a bibliometric methodology and social network analysis approaches. The initial data of this study, which comprises 5944 records in the field of iMetrics during 1978-2014, have been retrieved from Web of Science. UCINet and BibExcel software have been used to calculate centrality measures and h-index; g-index and contemporary h-index have been measured manually within Excel. Once all measures have been calculated, researchers used SPSS and LISREL statistical software packages.
Findings: Findings indicated that there is a significant correlation between social influence indicators and researchers’ performance. Moreover, the results of LISREL uncovered a significant correlation between ideational indicators and social ones.
Based on the findings revealed in this study, it seems that using balanced and compound bibliometric indicators has the capability to provide a relatively fair and clear insight on researchers’ influence in a specific field. In this way, it is possible to create individual profiles for all of researchers in that field. So that the result could be used for important decisions such as tenure and promotion committees, granting research projects, and the like.