GFsa Index for Adjustment of the Researchers’ Productivity/Ranking, considering the Two Most Relevant Variables Neglected: Total Number of Citations and “Scientific Age” – a Proof of Concept with the Assessment of 1,020 Highly-Cited Researchers in De
Authors: Vicentis Oliveira Fernandes Gustavo , Campos Hasse Fernandes Juliana 
Published: April 2024

Background: Research articles are essential for describing new ideas, techniques, and procedures and consolidating concepts. It creates an opportunity to expose studies and publicly assimilate published knowledge. Therefore, one of them is the most used and accepted index to verify the author&rsquo;s scientific impact is the H-index or Hirsch index. It provides a robust single metric that combines quality and quantity. Therefore, it presents disadvantages, (1) researchers with shorter scientific carriers may have fewer articles and citations than those with longer scientific life; (2) it allows scientists to receive citations even if no new papers are published; (3) it is only useful for comparing the better scientists in a field; (4) this indicator can never decrease; (5) it is only weakly sensitive to the number of citations received; (6) the major and minor (or no) contributor in the research gained equal h-index. Then, the H-index ignores the total of citations and the time of a researcher's experience (&ldquo;scientific age&rdquo; [sa]). Objective: Thus, the goal of this study was to present a new index system (GFsa index &copy;) based on the two variables completely forgotten (total of citations and &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo;), introducing a new terminology &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo;, to evaluate the best-ranked researchers in Dentistry. Methods: The AD Scientific Index was used, and all researchers included in this study were cited in the AD Scientific Index (2024) in the Dentistry field and had the Google Scholar page accessible for a consultation to manually obtain the total of citations and calculate the &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo;. The information was retrieved by two authors (G.V.O.F. and J.C.H.F.), who assessed the data twice to avoid errors or mistakes. For inclusion: a minimum H-index value of 30; for exclusion: (i) the author did not have a Google Scholar page; (ii) duplicated author; or (iii) presented any suspicious activities about manipulation of articles. Then, a dataset of all researchers who were reported in Dentistry was prepared (name, H-index, i10 index, and publications). The formula developed and applied was GFsa=(total number of citations)/(&ldquo;scientific age)2. The Pearson correlation statistically evaluated the data obtained; the confidence interval was 95%. Results: A total of 9,093 researchers in Dentistry were recorded, of whom 1,020 were included. Then, we collected all 1,020 researchers' Google Scholar data (publications, citations, and indexes), and each researcher's total citations and &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo; were registered and calculated. The mean &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo; registered was 34.18 &plusmn; 13.34 (standard error of mean = 0.4181). With this information and data collected, GFsa index &copy; was calculated, presenting a minimum value of 0.2186 and a maximum of 154.8 (mean = 10.33 &plusmn; 11.82; standard error of mean = 0.3706). Then, the data was organized and sorted following the ranking obtained in the GFsa index &copy;. The Pearson correlation showed that the H-index had a weakly positive association with the researcher&rsquo;s &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo;; this fact means that the H-index will increase according to the &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo; increase. Otherwise, a moderately negative correlation between GFsa and &ldquo;scientific age&rdquo; was demonstrated, whereby a higher GFsa &copy; had a lower &ldquo;Scientific age&rdquo;. This assessment shows that the variables introduced were fairly used. Moreover, a positive correlation was observed between both indexes (H-index and GFsa). Conclusion: It is possible to conclude that the new variable reported (&ldquo;Scientific age&rdquo;) and using the total citations brought a fairer and more feasible evaluation among the researchers. Thus, we are launching the new GFsa index &copy; and the new information named &ldquo;Scientific age&rdquo; for the first time in the literature. The future perspective of the GFsa &copy; application will be (1) the evaluation of the 9,093 researchers in Dentistry (total initially registered), including more authors/researchers in the Dentistry field, (2) expanding the exposition of this new index for other areas of the knowledge, and (3) provide free access of all data through the website (http://gfindex.us.to).