@CalebStanford It seems - well… it is clear that - I expressed myself in a way that obscures my main point and caused much distraction, and I apologize for this. We can agree I meant H-index is not that useful for a conference, as your correctly digested my core point.
Why not choose a conference where there are speakers you are interested in because you cite their work? This would be much more productive for you than trying to find if a conference is better than another based on a single number that measures the lifetime impact of one event in a series.
@NIMISHAN you’re missing the point. Of course you can produce an H-index for a conference but it means nothing since the H-index will give you a citation pattern for the event since it was held. Thus, your 2012 event will very likely have greater H-index than a 2024 conference (I’m repeating myself). So what if a conference held in 2012 had an impact? We are in 2025. Citations patterns also change over time.
@CalebStanford the H-index is a measure of lifetime impact: so yes someone senior is more likely to have a greater H-index than someone junior, which is why one should not rely only on this number to compare researchers. There's ample discussion on this topic and why a single number - especially the H-index - is misleading when comparing for instance a junior and a senior scientist. Conferences are great not because of their H-index but because they have great organizing and steering committees who insure that speakers are high quality.
yeah but you're missing the point. Sure, it is possible to assign an H-index to a conference but it means nothing. ACSEAC 2012 is very likely to have a higher H-index that ACSEAC 2024 because citations to the 2012 edition has had 13 years to accumulate whereas citations to the 2024 edition only one year. Moreover, what IF the 2012 edition was good? What does this tell you about the 2025 or 2026 edition? Nothing! It’s not as if you can attend the 2012 conference.
@CalebStanford I don’t think I get your point. The H-index is about the past; conferences are about the now. Journals don’t have H-indices, they have impact factors and Citescores and immediacy indices (or whatever fancy metric they can find to their advantage), all of which are numbers based on citations over a finite period. If a conference produced high-impact papers 10 years ago, what does that mean of the next event in the series? What of conferences not part of series?
I need a bit of help on a non-physics topic. There is a law of humanity which roughly states that if you come up with a way of measuring productivity people will immediate game that measure.
You may or may not support decision by US government but Springer Nature does not get much sympathy from me given their pricing practices and profit margin.
"Trump’s budget would even slash many of the areas his administration has identified as national priorities. NSF’s investment in research on advanced manufacturing, for example, would dip by 65%, microelectronics research would fall by 54%, and NSF’s support for biotechnology would drop by 30%. Research on artificial intelligence and quantum information science are the only priority areas that would be protected, with AI getting a 3% boost and QIS holding steady."
For those of you who follow US science policy: https://www.science.org/content/article/final-nsf-budget-proposal-jettisons-one-giant-telescope-amid-savage-agencywide-cuts
I mean: I used to get one appeal per year. Now I get 4. I would rarely get students filing for missed exams, this year I got 3. And, to use @ACuriousMind ‘s language , the students get mad when they get criticized.
@ACuriousMind Thanks for checking. This was just unusual (for me at least) and I attribute this to random arrival times of the downvotes, which will sometimes cluster. I remember keeping an eye out simply because of the coincidental timing.
funny you should mention it as I think I was also on the receiving end of strange downvotes recently. Basically one a day for like 3 or 4 consecutive days. Old posts…
(Now I have to figure out why I can access the whole thing… it does happen when I link from 3rd parties, like GoogleScholar, but it doesn’t happen all the time…)
Discussion on answer by ZeroTheHero: …
Discussion on answer by ZeroTheHero: …