Bibliometrics and Impact Factor: h-index

If your h-index score is 241, that means you have at least 241 papers/articles that have been cited by at least 241 other papers/articles.

Congratulations! That is a high h-index score.

Any database could measure an h-index from its citation data.

Currently, Web of Science and Scopus (look in Author Details) display it.

Dr. J. E. Hirsch created the h-index in the paper "An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output" in 2005.

He asked and answered "How does one quantify the cumulative impact and relevance of an individual’s scientific research output?"

A scientist has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each and the other (Np-h) papers have <h citations each.

Using the h-index:

• Measures broad impact of and individual’s work
• Unbiased way of comparing people within a discipline, especially in the sciences

An example of the use of h-index is the list of top researchers in computer science, ranked by h-index score.

Data that is used for citation measurements include:

• Number of times an author is cited
• Number of times an article is cited
• Number of articles published
• Number of articles published in a journal yearly
• Number of journals in a subject area
• Journals by frequency of publication
• Half Lives of Articles