Luca Saba, Michele Porcu, Gianluca De Rubeis, Antonella Balestrieri, Alessandra Serra, Mauro Giovanni Carta
Purpose: The standard bibliometric indexes ("-quotient "-," "2-," "-," "-," "-," and "-" index) do not considered the research' position in the author list of the paper. We proposed a new methodology, System of Authorship Best Assessment (SABA), to characterize the scientific output based on authors' position.
Material and Methods: Four classes S1A, S1B, S2A, and S2B include only papers where the researcher is in first, first/last, first/second/last, and first/second/second-last/last position respectively were used for the calculation of -index and number of citations The system was tested with Noble prize winners controlled with researchers matched for -index. The different in percentage between standard bibliometric index and S2B was calculated and compared.
Results: The percentage differences in Noble prize winners between S2B--index versus Global -index and number of citations is very lower comparing with control group (median 4.15% [adjusted 95% CI, 2.54-5.30] vs 9.00 [adjusted 95% CI, 7.16-11.84], < 0.001; average difference 8.7% vs 20.3%). All different in percentage between standard bibliometric index and S2B except two (2- and -index) were significantly lower among Noble prize compared with control group.
Conclusion: The SABA methodology better weight the research impact by showing that for excellent profiles the S2B is similar to global values whereas for other researchers there is a significant difference.
