What do we know about the h index?

@article{Bornmann2007WhatDW,
  title={What do we know about the h index?},
  author={Lutz Bornmann and Hans-Dieter Daniel},
  journal={J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol.},
  year={2007},
  volume={58},
  pages={1381-1385}
}
Jorge Hirsch (2005a, 2005b) recently proposed the h index to quantify the research output of individual scientists. The new index has attracted a lot of attention in the scientific community. The claim that the h index in a single number provides a good representation of the scientific lifetime achievement of a scientist as well as the (supposed) simple calculation of the h index using common literature databases lead to the danger of improper use of the index. We describe the advantages and… 
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524 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
177
Methods Citations
37
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524 Citations

The inconsistency of the h-index

It is argued that for the purpose of measuring the overall scientific impact of a scientist (or some other unit of analysis), the h-index behaves in a counterintuitive way and cannot be considered an appropriate indicator of a Scientist's overall scientificimpact.

New approaches for increasing the reliability of the h index research performance measurement

Taking as an example an extensive data set with bibliometric data on scientists working in the field of molecular biology, the h2 lower, h2 upper, and sRM values are computed and presented as complementary approaches that improve the reliability of the h index research performance measurement.

Analysis of the Hirsch index's operational properties

hg-index: a new index to characterize the scientific output of researchers based on the h- and g-indices

This paper presents a new index, called hg-index, to characterize the scientific output of researchers which is based on both h-index and g-index to try to keep the advantages of both measures as well as to minimize their disadvantages.

A case study of the modified Hirsch index hm accounting for multiple coauthors

Although the correlation between the original and the modified Hirsch index is relatively strong, the arrangement of the datasets is significantly different depending on whether they are put into order according to the values of either the original or the modified index.

Do we need the h index and its variants in addition to standard bibliometric measuresq

This study investigates whether there is a need for the h index and its variants in addition to standard bibliometric measures (SBMs) and proposes the use of any pair of indicators relating to the number of papers in a researcher's productive core as a meaningful approach for comparing scientists.

Do we need the h index and its variants in addition to standard bibliometric measures?

This study investigates whether there is a need for the h index and its variants in addition to standard bibliometric measures (SBMs) and proposes the use of any pair of indicators relating to the number of papers in a researcher’s productive core as a meaningful approach for comparing scientists.

3.4 The h-index

The h-index combines a measure of quantity and impact in a single indicator, and should not be confused with the last name of its inventor, Hirsch.

REFLECTIONS ON THE H-INDEX

Since Hirsch’s first publication of the h-index in 2005 (Hirsch, 2005), this new measure of academic impact has generated a widespread interest. At the time of writing (January 2007) Google Scholar…

Generalizing the H- and G-Indices

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References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 49 REFERENCES

Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work?

It was found that on average the h-index for successful applicants for post-doctoral research fellowships was consistently higher than for non-successful applicants.

New developments related to the Hirsch index

It is shown that the h-index on the one hand, and the A- and g-indices on the other, measure different things, and it would seem that the g-index is the more useful of the two.

An informetric model for the Hirsch-index

It is shown that in each practical situation an IPP always has a unique h-index, which is based on the total number of items in Lotkaian systems.

Refining the H-Index

The use of a standard interval, without regard for the publication frequency of the journal or the nature of the discipline, introduces bias into both the journal impact factor and the h-index when applied to journals.

Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests?

This work has obtained the rank plots of h and h I for four Brazilian scientific communities and found the h I index rank plots collapse into a single curve allowing comparison among different research areas.

Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks

The effectiveness and the benefits of the new indices are exhibited to unfold the full potential of the h-index, with extensive experimental results obtained from the DBLP, a widely known on-line digital library.

Generalized h-index for Disclosing Latent Facts in Citation Networks

Several inefficiencies of the h-index are demonstrated and a pair of generalizations and effective variants of it are developed to deal with scientist ranking and with publication forum ranking.

H-Index for Price Medalists

A look at the h-index of all still active Price Medal awardees, which is an extremely simple and compre-hensible indicator that is based on quite long publication periods and variable citationwindows, and it is predestined for purpose indeed.

Using the h-index to rank influential information scientistss: Brief Communication

It is shown how the h-index can be used to express the broad impact of a scholar's research output over time in more nuanced fashion than straight citation counts.

Universal Behavior of a Research Productivity Index

Indexes that account for good representations of an individual's productivity are theme of major importance for the evaluation and comparison among researchers. Recently, a new index was proposed…