Scientific impact evaluation and the effect of self-citations: Mitigating the bias by discounting the h-index

In this paper, we propose the V-index (or, Virtuosity index) as a novel metric to assess the scientific virtuosity of academics. This index can be applied to researchers and journals as well. In particular, we show that the V-index fills the gap of h-index and similar metrics in considering the self-citations of authors or journals. The paper provides with three real-world examples: in the first, we evaluate the research impact of the most productive scientists in Computer Science (according to DBLP); in the second, we assess the virtuosity of the journals ranked in the “Computer Science Applications” section of SCImago; in the last, we apply V-index for the assessment of the 2011 research activity of 130 countries all over the world.