Abstract

Recently, two new bibliometric indicators were proposed to gauge the productivity of ISI papers and applied to a sample of 120 Chilean ecologists (sensu lato). The purpose of these indexes was to make a correction of the h-index for the number of coauthors and the number of self-citations as well as to a scientific age-standardization of that index. However, an analysis of residuals from the regression of the logarithm of the number of alocitations (correlated with the h-index) showed little effect of both, the number of coauthors and of self-citations and showed that the examination of the residuals is a more robust bibliometric indicator. Nevertheless, in this comment I use that database and, through a log-log regression analysis and the use of the LOTKA computer program, I show that Chilean ecologists do not follow the scientometric law of Lotka (1926), which postulates that only a minority of authors produces most of the articles published in a particular subject area.