On the "persistency" of scientific publications: introducing an h-index for journals

What do we really mean by a “good” scientific journal? Do we care more about the short– time impact of our papers, or about the chance that they will still be read and cited on the long run? Here I show that, by regarding a journal as a “virtual scientist” that can be attributed a time–dependent Hirsch h-index, we can introduce a parameter that, arguably, better captures the “persistency” of a scientific publication. Curiously, however, this parameter seems to depend above all on the “thickness” of a journal. ∗ [email protected]