The H-Index
The H-Index was originally proposed by J.E. Hirsch as an attempt to quantify the productivity and impact of a researchers work.1 For example, “An h index of 5 means that a scientist has published five papers that each have at least five citations. An h index of 0 does not inevitably indicate that a scientist has been completely inactive: he or she might have already published a number of papers, but if none of the papers was cited at least once, the h index is 0.”2
Further information about the advantages and disadvantages of this score to measure author productivity or scholarship:
While often used in the context of a single author, the H-Index has also be used to measure the research output of a group of authors, a single institution, or a journal etc. In addition, more social media platforms are also offering research performance indicators as a complement to the H-Index score such as ResearchGate and Publons (Clarivate Analytics)
H-Index metrics can be obtained through more than one source and an author’s score can differ between these sources. The metric is dependent upon the journal coverage within each database and each source has a unique data pool. H-Index scores are also available from:
- Elsevier
- Clarivate Analytics
- Google Scholar