Measuring the research contribution of management academics using the Hirsch-index

There is an increasing emphasis on the use of metrics for assessing the research contribution of academics, departments, journals or conferences. Contribution has two dimensions: quantity which can be measured by number/size of the outputs, and quality which is most easily measured by the number of citations. Recently, Hirsch proposed a new metric which is simple, combines both quality and quantity in one number, and is robust to measurement problems. This paper applies the Hirsch-index (h-index) to three groups of management academics-BAM Fellows, INFORMS Fellows and members of COPIOR-in order to evaluate the extent to which the h-index would serve as a reliable measure of the contribution of researchers in the management field. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2009) 60, 1143-1153. doi:10.1057/jors.2008.94 Published online 24 September 2008