Uncertainties and Ambiguities in Percentiles and how to Avoid Them

TL;DR

This paper discusses how fractional scoring can eliminate uncertainties and ambiguities in percentile rank evaluations, ensuring precise and reproducible publication assessments.

Contribution

It introduces the fractional scoring scheme as a method to avoid uncertainties in percentile-based evaluation metrics.

Findings

Fractional scoring removes uncertainties in percentile evaluations.

Total scores with fractional scoring match theoretical values.

The method ensures precise and unambiguous publication ranking.

Abstract

The recently proposed fractional scoring scheme is used to attribute publications to percentile rank classes. It is shown that in this way uncertainties and ambiguities in the evaluation of percentile ranks do not occur. Using the fractional scoring the total score of all papers exactly reproduces the theoretical value.