The meaning of the h-index
By Jorge E. Hirsch, Gualberto Buela-Casal. 2014
159 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The h-index originates from the assumption that the number of citations received by a scientist is a better indicator of the relevance of his or her work than the number of papers he or she publishes or the journals where they are published. It takes into account the number of papers published and the citations to those papers in a balanced way, and thus is useful to make comparisons between scientists. The present paper addresses the most frequent questions about the h-index. Specifically, it explains its origin, its advantages compared to other indices, the factors that can influence it (e.g. age, field of knowledge, topic of research and language of publication), its variants, and the injustices it may lead to. In short, this paper provides a clear exposition of the hoped-for role of the h-index in the evaluation of scientists: that it serves as a useful complement to other indicators that are more subjective, and that it contributes to the progress of science by aiding decision-making on allocation of research resources in a more effective way, and on rewarding researchers who contribute to scientific progress in a more fair way.
Subfields: Statistics and Probability, Strategy and Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2b2b062f219f1779e0e8f3fb38ab691e1bc120eb
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Statistics and Probability
- E. Giménez
- Francisco Manzano-Agugliaro
- An Zeng
- Jianlin Zhou
- M. Salinas
- Jinshan Wu
- Yougui Wang
- H. Eugene Stanley
In Strategy and Management
Citations in the corpus
- Reputation and impact in academic careers (2013, unknown): “[58] Redner S (2010) On the meaning of the h-index.”
- The science of science: from the perspective of complex systems (2017, background): “does not add anything new beyond the citation count [188].”
- Worldwide Research on Plant Defense against Biotic Stresses as Improvement for Sustainable Agriculture (2018, background): “H-index, defined as h of one’s total articles has at least h citations each [40], allows for the study of a journal, an institution, a scientific or a country according to the number of publications or the number of citations [41,42].”