Academia as a d-index measuring contest
Social scientists are trapped by quantification: deans can't read but they can count, so researchers are judged by metrics like the h-index and Impact Factor. Kevin Munger critiques the new D-index from Research.com, arguing it's just another flawed metric, and introduces his own alternative: the k-index. Designed to reward diverse contributions—solo work, methods citations, recent activity—it aims to counter the gaming of existing metrics. Built on open data from OpenAlex, the k-index covers over 36,000 political scientists, and Munger also highlights the cost of for-profit publishing, noting his journal has saved $400,000 in fees.
Deans can’t read, but they can count.
- stafford_beer
https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-t...
author here -- the follow-up post explains the point...it's an existence proof, that a metric exists which ranks me first....which doesn't mean that we have to care about that metric, but it does mean that we shouldn't be taking any metrics for granted as "real"
- jll29
Regarding "research.com", which is linked from the article: this is weird - some random observations...:
• Donald E. Knuth, the most eminent computer scientist alive, ranked 92nd (!) in computer science - seems off by about two orders of magnitde.
• Noam A. Chomsky, of whom some say he is the most-cited scholar alive (on the level of Aristotle), ranked seventh in the US. He gave theoretical computer science the Chomsky hierarchy and the Chomsky Normal Form, he has been called the "father of modern linguistics" (Hewbrew morphology, generative grammars, competence-performance distinction, Universal grammar, government & binding theory, the review of Skinner's book that single-handedly destroyed behaviorism, the 'minimalist' program, ...), in politology he is a long-standing and perhaps the most ardent and vocal critic of US foreign policy, supporter of Palestine (being a Jew himself), and in communications and media studies his book (with Herman) "manufactoring Consent" is a field-defining classic. - https://research.com/u/noam-chomsky
• regarding school rankings, in Germany, KIT (Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology) seems missing entirely, a top place in CS research.
- vinaigrette
Interesting article and methodology. I wish you could play with the ranking features to see how the ranking evolves.
I didn't know Kevin Munger. You could definitely seen regarding his field and publications why he would weight 25% of the score to the methodology citations though. Which is partly why his index is very flawed, seeing how qualitative endeavors would be squashed (Qualitative methodologies being very dependant on context). Maybe it does bridge a gap between disciplines that are quantitatively oriented ; STEM and social sciences. The humanities would be nowhere though.
It does beg the question of rankings to begin with ... A dean should know better than to statsmaxx (note the irony).