Evolutionary Biological Data Science Laboratory

profit p-index

The profit indices (Aziz and Rozing 2013) attempt to measure the effect of collaboration on an author's impact. They use a harmonic weighting algorithm and information on author order (assuming that authors in the middle of an author list had the least impact) to estimate effort for each publication. The effort for the i^th publication is

$$E_i=\frac{1+\left|A_i+1-2a_i\right|}{\frac{1}{2}A_i^2+A_i\left(1-D_i\right)},$$

where

$$D_i=\begin{matrix} 0 & \text{if }A_i\text{ is even} \\ \frac{1}{2A_i} & \text{if }A_i\text{ is odd} \end{matrix}.$$

The sum of E_i for all publications is the number of “monograph equivalents” (a monograph being defined as a single-authored publication). The profit (p)-index is the relative contribution of collaborators to an individual's total publication record, or

$$p=1-\frac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{P}{E_i}}{P}.$$

This value ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating no contribution of co-authors (all solo-authored papers) and 1 meaning complete contribution from co-authors (a value of exactly 1 is impossible).

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