An Internet measure of the value of citations

A new method for computing the value of citations is introduced and compared with the PageRank algorithm for author ranking. In our proposed approach, the value of each publication is expressed in CENTs (sCientific currENcy Tokens). The publication’s value is then divided by the number of citations made by that publication to yield a value for each citation. As citations are the acknowledgements of the work by authors other than oneself (indicating that it has been useful), self-citations count as zero in acknowledged citation value. Circular citations, a generalized type of self-citation, are considered to have a reduced acknowledged citation value. Finally, we propose a modification of the h-index to define it as the largest integer such that the i-th publication (on the list of publications sorted by their value in CENTs) is worth more than i CENTs. This new index, termed the i-index or i 2 in short, appears to be a more precise measure of the impact of publications and their authors’ productivity than the h-index.