The w‐index: A measure to assess scientific impact by focusing on widely cited papers

Abstract

Abstract Based on the principles of the h‐index, I propose a new measure, the w‐index, as a particularly simple and more useful way to assess the substantial impact of a researcher's work, especially regarding excellent papers. The w‐index can be defined as follows: If w of a researcher's papers have at least 10 w citations each and the other papers have fewer than 10( w +1) citations, that researcher's w‐index is w . The results demonstrate that there are noticeable differences between the w‐index and the h‐index, because the w‐index plays close attention to the more widely cited papers. These discrepancies can be measured by comparing the ranks of 20 astrophysicists, a few famous physical scientists, and 16 Price medalists. Furthermore, I put forward the w(q)‐index to improve the discriminatory power of the w‐index and to rank scientists with the same w . The factor q is the least number of citations a researcher with w needed to reach w +1. In terms of both simplicity and accuracy, the w‐index or w(q)‐index can be widely used for evaluation of scientists, journals, conferences, scientific topics, research institutions, and so on.