Do we need the g-index?

TL;DR

This paper examines the g-index's validity and argues for its use over the square root of total citations, based on empirical analysis of datasets.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence supporting the g-index's distinctiveness and usefulness compared to the square root of total citations.

Findings

The difference between g-index and sqrt of total citations can be significant.

Empirical data suggests the g-index captures meaningful citation impact.

Supports the adoption of the g-index in bibliometric evaluations.

Abstract

Using a very small sample of 8 datasets it was recently shown by De Visscher (2011) that the g-index is very close to the square root of the total number of citations. It was argued that there is no bibliometrically meaningful difference. Using another somewhat larger empirical sample of 26 datasets I show that the difference may be larger and I argue in favor of the g-index.