Universality of citation distributions: towards an objective measure of scientific impact

We study the distributions of citations received by a single publication within several disciplines, spanning all fields of science. We show that the probability that a paper is cited $c$ times has large variations between different disciplines, but all distributions are rescaled on a universal curve when the relative indicator $c/c_0$ is considered, where $c_0$ is the average number of citations per paper for the discipline. In addition we show that the same universal behavior occurs when citation distributions of papers published in the same field, but in different years, are compared. These findings provide a strong validation of $c/c_0$ as an unbiased indicator for citation performance across disciplines and years. Based on this indicator, we introduce a generalization of the h-index suitable for comparing scientists working in different fields.