CNetS graduate student Diep Thi Hoang and associate director Filippo Menczer have developed a tool (called Scholarometer, previously Tenurometer in beta version) for evaluating the impact of scholars in their field. Scholarometer uses the h-index, which combines the scholarly output with the influence of the work, but adds the universal h-index proposed by Radicchi et al. to compare the impact of research in different disciplines. This is enabled by a social mechanism in which users of the tool collaborate to tag the disciplines of the scholars. "We have computer scientists, physicists, social scientists, people from many different backgrounds, who publish in lots of different areas," says Menczer. However, the various communities have different citation methods and different publishing traditions, making it difficult to compare the influence of a sociologist and a computer scientist, for example. The universal h-index controls for differences in the publishing traditions, as well as the amount of research scholars in various fields have to produce to make an impact. Menczer is especially excited about the potential to help show how the disciplines are merging into one another. More from Inside Higher Ed... (Also picked up by ACM TechNews and CACM.)