A class of bibliometric indices based on a sum of increasing and concave functions / Una classe di indici bibliometrici basati su somme di funzioni crescenti e concave

The h-index is used by major citation databases to evaluate the quality of the scientific performance of a researcher. We propose a new class of indices to measure the quality of the publications within the h-core (the group of the h most highly cited papers): the aim is to reduce the effect of few highly cited h-core articles (which affects some well-known alternatives to the h-index such as the E- and A- indices), by considering a sum of increasing and concave functions of the “excess” citations in the papers that contributed to the h-index.