The h-index is an index that attempts to measure a researcher's academic production and impact (citations) in one measurement.
An h-index of h, means that you have h publications that have been cited at least h times.
You can easily calculate your h-index by ranking your publications in descending order by the number of citations and seeing how many publications (h) have at least h citations.
The h-index is based on a researcher's most cited publications and may vary depending on which source is being used for the calculation.
You can calculate the h-index in the citation databases Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Clarivate).
The citation databases and Google Scholar cover different publications, and the number of citations will therefore vary across databases. Thus, different h-indices can be calculated for the same person depending on which source is used.
The size of an h-index also varies significantly across disciplines, and is influenced by how many years a researcher has been actively publishing. In addition, the h-index will not always behave consistently when ranking researchers. Therefore, comparing researchers using the h-index is often problematic
Despite this, the h-index is frequently used as an alternative to traditional methods that typically focus on either productivity or influence in the form of citations.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact the liaison librarian associated with your field, who will be happy to assist you with your questions.
Alternatively, you are always welcome to contact your local library.
To ensure that your h-index is updated on an ongoing basis and can be read on Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, you can create and link a number of researcher ID’s. Read more about researcher ID’s.
