  The purpose of this study is to compare the changing behavior of two counting
methods (whole counting and whole-normalized counting) and inflation rate at
country level research productivity and impact. For this, publication data on
tribology research published between 1998 and 2012 from SCOPUS has been used.
Only internationally collaborated papers are considered for comparison between
two counting methods. The result of correlation tests shows that there is
highly correlation in all the four indicators between the two counting methods.
However, the result of t-test shows that there is significant difference in the
three indicators (paper count, citation count and h-index) between the two
counting methods. This study concludes that whole-normalized counting
(fractional) is the better choice for publication and citations counting at the
country level assessment.
