Scientometric assessment of engineering in Malaysians universities

There is a world trend for Research Performance Evaluation (RPE), developing of new scientometric indices and examining of their application. Consequently, concerns and anomalies arise about the convergent validity and reliability of these indices for the decision making purposes. This is especially prevalent in the region/countries/disciplines having less or emerging trends of publishing and getting citations. The present scientometric study addresses usefulness of the most noted metric h-index along with other selected indicators in the field of Engineering in Malaysians universities. To understand, the role of this metric if any, we examined the functional correlation, predictive value and its relationship with national assessment criteria. Results report that this indicator has good potential to work alone, ease in use and robust to get a broader snapshot for positioning and performance evaluation. However, for better decision making purpose, this can be used for broader contextual peer assessment process along with other indicators. Its validity is further checked with two size independent institutional h-indices: h_G–H and h_m.