Bibliometrics for Internet Media: Applying the h-Index to YouTube

TL;DR

This paper adapts the h-index and g-index metrics to evaluate YouTube content creators by considering their videos and view counts, providing a combined measure of productivity and impact.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of bibliometric indices to Internet media, specifically YouTube, for assessing creator influence based on view counts.

Findings

h-index correlates with creator impact

g-index captures average view performance

Metrics outperform total view counts in evaluation

Abstract

The h-index can be a useful metric for evaluating a person's output of Internet media. Here we advocate and demonstrate adaption of the h-index and the g-index to the top video content creators on YouTube. The h-index for Internet video media is based on videos and their view counts. The index h is defined as the number of videos with >= h*10^5 views. The index g is defined as the number of videos with >= g*10^5 views on average. When compared to a video creator's total view count, the h-index and g-index better capture both productivity and impact in a single metric.