The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases

Assessment of the relative impact of diseases and pathogens is important for agencies and other organizations charged with providing disease surveillance, management and control. It also helps funders of disease-related research to identify the most important areas for investment. Decisions as to wh...

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Main Authors:	McIntyre, K. Marie, Hawkes, Iain, Waret-Szkuta, Agnès, Morand, Serge, Baylis, Matthew
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2011
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3098225/

id	pubmed-3098225
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-30982252011-05-27 The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases McIntyre, K. Marie Hawkes, Iain Waret-Szkuta, Agnès Morand, Serge Baylis, Matthew Research Article Assessment of the relative impact of diseases and pathogens is important for agencies and other organizations charged with providing disease surveillance, management and control. It also helps funders of disease-related research to identify the most important areas for investment. Decisions as to which pathogens or diseases to target are often made using complex risk assessment approaches; however, these usually involve evaluating a large number of hazards as it is rarely feasible to conduct an in-depth appraisal of each. Here we propose the use of the H-index (or Hirsch index) as an alternative rapid, repeatable and objective means of assessing pathogen impact. H-index scores for 1,414 human pathogens were obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information's Web of Science (WOS) in July/August 2010. Scores were compared for zoonotic/non-zoonotic, and emerging/non-emerging pathogens, and across taxonomic groups. H-indices for a subset of pathogens were compared with Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) estimates for the diseases they cause. H-indices ranged from 0 to 456, with a median of 11. Emerging pathogens had higher H-indices than non-emerging pathogens. Zoonotic pathogens tended to have higher H-indices than human-only pathogens, although the opposite was observed for viruses. There was a significant correlation between the DALY of a disease and the H-index of the pathogen(s) that cause it. Therefore, scientific interest, as measured by the H-index, appears to be a reflection of the true impact of pathogens. The H-index method can be utilized to set up an objective, repeatable and readily automated system for assessing pathogen or disease impact. Public Library of Science 2011-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3098225/ /pubmed/21625581 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019558 Text en McIntyre et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	McIntyre, K. Marie Hawkes, Iain Waret-Szkuta, Agnès Morand, Serge Baylis, Matthew
spellingShingle	McIntyre, K. Marie Hawkes, Iain Waret-Szkuta, Agnès Morand, Serge Baylis, Matthew The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
author_facet	McIntyre, K. Marie Hawkes, Iain Waret-Szkuta, Agnès Morand, Serge Baylis, Matthew
author_sort	McIntyre, K. Marie
title	The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
title_short	The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
title_full	The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
title_fullStr	The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
title_full_unstemmed	The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases
title_sort	h-index as a quantitative indicator of the relative impact of human diseases
description	Assessment of the relative impact of diseases and pathogens is important for agencies and other organizations charged with providing disease surveillance, management and control. It also helps funders of disease-related research to identify the most important areas for investment. Decisions as to which pathogens or diseases to target are often made using complex risk assessment approaches; however, these usually involve evaluating a large number of hazards as it is rarely feasible to conduct an in-depth appraisal of each. Here we propose the use of the H-index (or Hirsch index) as an alternative rapid, repeatable and objective means of assessing pathogen impact. H-index scores for 1,414 human pathogens were obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information's Web of Science (WOS) in July/August 2010. Scores were compared for zoonotic/non-zoonotic, and emerging/non-emerging pathogens, and across taxonomic groups. H-indices for a subset of pathogens were compared with Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) estimates for the diseases they cause. H-indices ranged from 0 to 456, with a median of 11. Emerging pathogens had higher H-indices than non-emerging pathogens. Zoonotic pathogens tended to have higher H-indices than human-only pathogens, although the opposite was observed for viruses. There was a significant correlation between the DALY of a disease and the H-index of the pathogen(s) that cause it. Therefore, scientific interest, as measured by the H-index, appears to be a reflection of the true impact of pathogens. The H-index method can be utilized to set up an objective, repeatable and readily automated system for assessing pathogen or disease impact.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2011
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3098225/
_version_	1611454733010075648

The H-Index as a Quantitative Indicator of the Relative Impact of Human Diseases

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