Percentile rank scores are congruous indicators of relative performance, or aren't they?

Abstract

Percentile ranks and the I3 indicator were introduced by Bornmann, Leydesdorff, Mutz and Opthof. These two notions are based on the concept of percentiles (or quantiles) for discrete data. As several definitions for these notions exist we propose one that we think is suitable in this context. Next we show that if the notion of relative congruous indicators is carefully defined then percentile rank scores are congruous indicators of relative performance. The I3 indicator is a strictly congruous indicator of absolute performance.