Research Performance Measures and the Moderating Role of Faculty Characteristics in Epidemiology

Several numeric measures have been proposed to evaluate the individual researchers' scientific performance. Among these measures, h-index is the most common and well recognized measure of research productivity and impact in scientific communities. However, empirical investigations and recent inspections revealed some shortcomings and limitations of this measure. In order to complement these limitations, several variants have been proposed in which g-index and ar-index were among the most discussed measures. The aim of this study was to examine h-index, g-index and ar-index across Iranian epidemiologists to identify the moderating characteristics as well as the distribution of these measures in the field. Using Web of Science Database, a list of Iranian epidemiologists was searched and total number of articles, total citations, and citations per paper, h-index, scientific age, g-index and ar-index were extracted and calculated for any epidemiologist. Descriptive statistics and multivariate linear regression models were used to examine research performance measures of Iranian epidemiologists. According to our findings, research performance measures found to be statistically associated with scientific age and academic ranking of Iranian Epidemiologists. Gender differences were not relevant to research performance across different measures.