Redefining Academic Performance: The Development of the NK Composite Scholarly Performance Index
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The evaluation of academic performance using bibliometric indicators is central to quality assurance, promotion, and reward systems in higher education. However, widely used metrics, such as publication counts, total citations, and the h-index, face persistent limitations, including selective coverage of scholarly outputs, susceptibility to citation manipulation, insufficient adjustment for career length and publication continuity, and the uniform treatment of heterogeneous publication types and co-author contributions. To address these issues, this study proposes the NK index as a time- and contribution-adjusted composite scholarly performance measure that integrates (i) a broader set of citable scholarly outputs, (ii) publication- and citation-type scores, (iii) author contribution coefficients, and (iv) academic age and productive duration parameters. By combining output volume and citation impact within a single normalised score, the NK index aims to enable fairer comparisons across academics with different career trajectories when only bibliometric data are available.
Source: Politik Ekonomik Kuram
DOI: 10.30586/pek.1821958
Author: Nalan Sabır Taştan
Institution: Ordu University
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7140491684