  Ranking groups of researchers is important in several contexts and can serve
many purposes such as the fair distribution of grants based on the scientist's
publication output, concession of research projects, classification of journal
editorial boards and many other applications in a social context. In this
paper, we propose a method for measuring the performance of groups of
researchers. The proposed method is called alpha-index and it is based on two
parameters: (i) the homogeneity of the h-indexes of the researchers in the
group; and (ii) the h-group, which is an extension of the h-index for groups.
Our method integrates the concepts of homogeneity and absolute value of the
h-index into a single measure which is appropriate for the evaluation of
groups. We report on experiments that assess computer science conferences based
on the h-indexes of their program committee members. Our results are similar to
a manual classification scheme adopted by a research agency.
