Highly Cited Researcher in 2018
Sergio Alonso’s research career began in 2002 during his final year project. After obtaining his degree in Computer Engineering in 2003, he was awarded an FPU scholarship to pursue his doctoral thesis. At that point, he became a member of the “Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Systems” research group at the University of Granada. Following the award of his European Doctorate in Computer Science, he secured a substitute position in the Department of Languages and Computer Systems at the University of Granada. Shortly thereafter, he was hired in the same department as a non-doctoral Assistant. Over the following years, he was promoted through that position until, in June 2012, he obtained the University Lecturer (Titular de Universidad) position he currently holds.
His research activity has been primarily focused on two different lines of work. The first revolves around decision-making with fuzzy and incomplete information, where he developed methods for carrying out consensus and decision-making processes in environments characterized by uncertainty and missing or incomplete information.
The second line of research he has been working on concerns bibliometric indicators for evaluating the research output of individuals, groups, and research institutions, with particular attention to the then-novel h-index and its many variants, some of which were proposed by his collaborators and himself. Within this line, he has also focused on the evaluation of academic websites and digital libraries as an additional mechanism for ensuring their quality.
His research activity is supported by a large number of publications in the leading journals of his research areas and by the citation counts those publications have received. He currently holds an h-index of 21 and more than 3,400 citations according to the Web of Science, demonstrating that this work has had a significant impact on the research community. He has 11 highly cited papers according to Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators, and since November 2018 he has appeared as a Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% by citations) in the “Cross-Field” category (according to Clarivate Analytics). In addition to journal publications with impact factors, he has published more than 50 papers at specialized conferences, as well as more than 10 book chapters.
He has also worked on the practical application of research results through the development of various tools — including software applications, web applications, and mobile applications — for specific areas such as air transportation, digital libraries, e-health, e-commerce, and research indicator visualization tools.