h presumably for “Hirsch” – physicist at UCSD who first proposed the index in 2005Paper has been cited 267 times (last time I checked)h = 0: May have published papers—they just haven’t been cited
Hirsch: an individual’s h should increase more or less directly with time.vanRaan (2004):“A ‘Sleeping Beauty in Science’ is a publication that goes unnoticed (‘sleeps’) for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attracts a lot of attention (‘is awakened by a prince’).”
Data needed for calculation available in:Web of ScienceScopusGoogle ScholarChemical AbstractsIn WoS, do with author search in straight Search (not Cited Ref Search)*CLICK* Or, use the Citation Report creator…
… and read h directly off the report.
In Scopus, Starzlh=87 (diff DB, diff results)
Countries: in biology and biochemistry for the period 1996–2006, the US, the UK, and Germany have h indices of 400, 219 and 206 respectively (Csajbók et al, 2007).Complement to journal impact factors (Braun et al., 2005)Caveat: don’t include review journals b/c upper limit of a journal’s h is # of papers published, and they don’t publish very many.Banks (2006): h - b index for interesting topics and compounds: found by entering a topic (search string, like superstring or teleportation ) or compound (name or chemical formula) into the Web of Science database and then ordering the results in terms of citations, by largest first.how much work has already been done on certain topics or compounds, what the hot topics (or older topics ) of interest are, or what topic or compound is mainstream research at the present time
Convergent ValidityThe ability of a measurement scale to correlate (or converge) with other measures of the same variable. How does h relate to other standards for evaluating research performance?Other bibliometric indicators Outcomes of peer review
Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) = an international foundation for promotion of basic biomedical research
van Raan’s actual conclusion is more nuanced:“Results show that the h-index and our bibliometric ‘crown indicator’ [a composite measure] both relate in a quite comparable way with peer judgments. But for smaller groups in fields with ‘less heavy citation traffic’ the crown indicator appears to be a more appropriate measure of research performance.” [emphasis mine]
Database = SPIRES (Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System database)
As derived from Web of Science records (same holds true for any other resource whose records don’t include a definitive author ID—which covers all products)From WoS documentation:“The h-index factor is based on the depth of your Web of Science subscription and your selected timespan. Items that do not appear on the Results page will not be factored into the calculation. If your subscription depth is 10 years, then the h-index value is based on this depth even though a particular author may have published articles more than 10 years ago.
h as alternative to inappropriate use on journal impact factors to report personal achievement in tenure and promotion decisions.My Dec 2006 HSLS Update article on this problem:http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/about/news/hslsupdate/2006/december/personal_cit_counting
But for every advantage to h cited by Hirsch and colleagues who see the glass half full, someone (sometimes the same person) points out a problem.Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Glänzel (2006)Hirsch (2005)Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Sidiropoulos et al. (2006)Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Sidiropoulos, Katsaros, & Manolopoulos (2006)Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Sidiropoulos et al. (2006)Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Sidiropoulos et al. (2006)
Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Kelly & Jennions (2006); Sidiropoulos et al. (2006)Hirsch (2005)Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Lehmann et al. (2008)Hirsch (2005)
Bornmann & Daniel (2007) citing Joint Committee on Quantitative Assessment of Research (2008)Hirsch (2005)
N.B.: Need for several suggested by Hirsch himselfm quotient: Corrects for bias toward researchers with longer careers/more papershI: More co-authors, more articles, and potentially more citations (?)