The composite index or composite indicator (abbreviated as ''c-score'') is a new numerical indicator that evaluates the quality of a scientist's research publications, regardless of the scientific field in which he/she operates. It was initially introduced in 2016 by the Greek-American

metascience Metascience (also known as meta-research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research while reducing inefficiency. It is also known as "''research on research''" ...

researcher

John Ioannidis John P. A. Ioannidis (; el, Ιωάννης Ιωαννίδης, ; born August 21, 1965) is a Greek-American physician-scientist, writer and Stanford University professor who has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and c ...

at Stanford University and his collaborators, R. Klavans R. and K. Boyack. In 2019 an improved version of it was announced in the scientific journal ''

PLOS Biology ''PLOS Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003. It is the first journal published by the Public Library of Science. The editor-in-chief is Nonia Pariente. In ...

'' under the paper title "Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators". Based on a metaresearch study by Ioannidis et al., the new ''c-score'' is calculated by an algorithm that combines all scientific research fields and ranks research from the

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

database across all research areas, even from those with lower citation density. Such meta-research has analyzed and recently published, ultimately identifing the top 2% of the world's most influential scientists, in a unified way across each and every scientific sub-discipline. In general, the parameters that are taken into account and eventually determine the new composite-index (''c-score'') are the following ones: * the total number of citations received (NC), * the Hirsch index for the citations received (H), * the Schreiber co-authorship adjusted Hm index for the citations received (Hm). * the total number of citations received to papers for which the scientist is single author (NCS), * the total number of citations received to papers for which the scientist is single or first author (NCSF), and * the total number of citations received to papers for which the scientist is single, first, or last author (NCSFL).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Composite index Citation metrics Academic publishing