H-index
The Hirsch or h-index is an indicator with which an individual scientist's scholarly output in a particular field can be measured. What sort of (career) impact does a scientist have within his or her field? This quality indicator was defined in 2005 by the American physicist Jorge E. Hirsch in PNAS. Hirsch defined the h-index as follows:
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have fewer than h citations
In Web of Science, the h-index has become a part of the 'Citation Report'. Scopus also has included the index in its database. A scientist's h-index depends on the database in which it is calculated; the indexed journals in WoS are (partly) different from those in Scopus.
According to Hirsch, this index gives a more realistic picture of the scientific impact of someone's publications than other numbers such as the total number of publications (says nothing of the importance or impact of the publications), the total number of citations (can be influenced by a small number of frequently cited articles such as review articles) or the number of citations per article (favours authors with few publications).
The h-index is useful only for comparing scientists within the same field. It is more of a career metre than a quality metre. The disadvantage is that successful scientists may have a very low h-index at the beginning of their careers.
Calculate your h-index |
The H-index was developed by J.E. Hirsch and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (46): 16569-16572 November 15 2005. |
You can find more information about the h-index and variants of it (contemporary h-index, g-index, e-index, age-weighted citation rate, pop variation, multi-authored h-index) on Anne Will Harzing's Publish or Perish website under the heading 'Metrics.' |
