introduce a novel index for scientific outputs ranking by the addressing self-citation

Introduction: the hirsch index is not comprehensive for scientific outputs ranking. its structure does not include some issues such as self-citation. self-citation perhaps creates a scientometric complication. using some scientometric indices such as h-index is inadequate for ranking scientists alone, and they perhaps turn to fake self-citations to increase their h-index over time. a new index (ah-index) based on self-citation was introduced to scientific outputs ranking in this study.methods: the information system integration division (isid) of hamadan university of medical sciences was used to calculate the ah-index on august 5, 2023 (n=445). bootstrapping technique was used to estimate uncertainty, standard error and 95% confidence interval of pearson’s correlation coefficient between the new index and h-index.results: this study shows that the correlation coefficient between h-index and ah-index is 0.995 (c.i.95%: 0.993-0.997). the authors’ rank according to the h-index differed from the ah-index; where, scientists with high self-citations lost their position from the top of the list of authors according to our new indicator.conclusion: the findings of this study showed that by adjusting the self-citation of scientists, the position of the author in the list of authors would be changed and becomes fairer.