Exploring the h-type measure and its theoretical model in the Context of E-commerce

 Bingjia Shao1, Feng Xiao1 and Star X. Zhao2,*

The aim of this paper is to study whether the h-type index and Schubert-Glänzel model which was originally used in bibliometrics can work in the border social and information systems, such as with E-commerce. This paper, introduces the popularity index (h_P) to profile online sellers and products and test the accuracy of the Schubert-Glänzel model of the h_P index using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm (LMA). The h_P index was tested on the sample of Taobao (a leading Chinese E-commerce system). 300 products on Taobao were randomly selected from ten categories of the most popular online products as the samples for this study. It was found that the Popularity index (h_P) is consistent with the Schubert-Glänzel model of the h index. This shows that existing theoretical bibliometric model which was originally used in the scientific literature, could be helpful in the broader social or information systems.

Keywords  Bibliometric measures, Hirsch-type indicators, Schubert-Glänzel model, Popularity index, Online E-commerce

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 110, NO. 12, 25 JUNE 2016