Using a “Delphi approach”, an institute wide panel of staff members were contacted by Prof. A.Th Vulgaris and requested to list factors and indicators to be considered in the research. The result of this first step of self evaluation resulted in a clear direction of indicator development. There were however several indicators omitted from the factor analysis. These factors were either proxies for existing indicators or deemed unfit to demonstrate academic prowess. A few noteworthy contributions however were:
- Hedgehog factor – a measure of the prickly defence of your ideas against critiques
- Hot air factor – proportion of the paper which says absolutely nothing, but is full of the latest jargon
- Hippo factor – number of times hippos are quoted in the text - must be direct quotes, not reported speech
- Hype factor or Hubris factor – i.e. hyping oneself = self-citations (no problems with that in the standard H factor
- Haitch or h’age factor – the standard H factor does not take into account author’s ages or years of researching - thus ensuring that all the old farts (also known as hot air Hfactor) retain the highest scores.
