What is the best way to measure a researcher's scientific impact?
(Phys.org) —From a qualitative perspective, it's relatively easy to define a good researcher as one who publishes many good papers. But quantitatively measuring these papers is more complicated, since they can be measured in several different ways. In the past few years, several different metrics have been proposed that determine an individual's scientific caliber based on the quantity and quality of the individual's peer-reviewed publications. However, most of these metrics assume that all authors contribute equally when a paper has multiple authors. In a new study, researchers have argued that this assumption causes bias in these metrics, and they have proposed a new metric that accounts for the relative contributions of all coauthors, resulting in a rational way to capture a researcher's scientific impact.