/h-index-simulator

Simulator for h-index evolution

Primary LanguageR

h-index simulator

How to run it

Run the following command in your R console:

library(shiny)
shiny::runGitHub("guillaumelobet/h-index-simulator", "guillaumelobet") 

How it works

The simulator in itself is quite simple and needs only a couple of inputs:

  • the average number of paper you publish per year + the standard deviation
  • the average impact factor of the journal you publish in + the standard deviation
  • the target h-index (in my case, it will be 10)
  • the starting year (the date of your first paper)

Then the simulator follows a couple of simple rules:

  • as long as our h-index is below the target, keep publishing
  • publish n papers per year
    • n is picked from a normal distribution, with the mean and standard deviation defined by the parameters
  • for each paper, assign an impact factor (IF)
    • this IF is picked from a normal distribution, with the mean and standard deviation defined by the parameters
  • compute the number of citation for each papers (based on its age and the impact factor of the journal)
  • compute the h-index. If it is below the target, keep publishing

So, the simulator is quite simple and follows a couple of basic rules. It certainly has many drawbacks and could be improved. But I figured it would be enough for what I wanted to do.