Due to its amorphous nature, the term “academic excellence” is often interpreted in various ways which need not necessarily align. Indeed, over a hundred different researcher-level performance indicators, which are typically at the basis of academic excellence identification and exploration, have been proposed and evaluated in prior literature (Kulczycki et al.,
2017; Salmi,
2011; Sziklai,
2021; Wildgaard et al.,
2014). For example, Rodríguez‐Navarro (
2011) showed that the number of publications, citations, and top one percent most cited publications correlate with Nobel Prize achievements. Similarly, Robinson et al. (
2019a) showed that H-index and i10-index are useful indicators of medical consultants’ success in the United Kingdom, and Kpolovie and Onoshagbegbe (
2017) showed these two indexes are also useful in distinguishing excellent academic departments and institutes. Amongst these measures of excellence, citation-based scientometrics seems to be the most widely accepted quantitative measure for assessing scientific excellence (Alexi et al.,
2024; Borchardt & Hartings,
2018; Massucci & Docampo,
2019). These measures range from simple ones such as the number of publications at the top 5% most frequently cited publications in the field (Tijssen et al.,
2002), the number of publications in highly-cited journals (Garousi & Fernandes,
2016), the number of publications which received at least 10 citations (aka i10-index) (Ansari et al.,
2022; Kozak & Bornmann,
2012), a factoring of both citations and the number of publications such as the various versions of the h-index (Ball,
2007; Koltun & Hafner,
2021; Liu et al.,
2023), to more sophisticated ones such as the g-index (Egghe,
2006), the scientist impact factor (Lippi & Mattiuzzi,
2017), and the u-index (Dillon,
2022), to name a few. Unfortunately, as most researchers tend to agree, defining “excellence” in a standardized and consistent way presents serious difficulties (Jong et al.,
2021). Specifically, each researcher-level indicator reflects just one particular dimension of the general concept of research performance or excellence (Mryglod et al.,
2013a,
2013b). Consequently, the use of only a single indicator to gauge the overall academic performance of a researcher may provide an incomplete picture, and thus a combination of the various types of indicators is needed in order to offer policymakers and evaluators valid and useful assessments (Froghi et al.,
2012; Van den Besselaar & Sandström,
2019). Notably, an excellent researcher is not simply one whose work scores highly on the above metrics (Vinkler,
2010). Indeed, prior literature has suggested multiple aspects deemed desirable, characteristic, and perhaps defining, of excellent researchers such as student supervision (Serenko et al.,
2022), funding acquisition (Glänzel & Schoepflin,
1994), the ability to generate disruptive science (Leibel & Bornmann,
2024), etc.