H-index
From The Embassy of Good Science
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ThemesH-index
What is this about?
The h-index, introduced by Jorge Hirsch in 2005, is a metric that conveys both the productivity and citation impact of an individual researcher (1). If a researcher has a h-index of 5 then the researcher has 5 publications with 5 or more citations. A h-index of 75 means that there are 75 publications with 75 or more citations. It thus becomes progressively more difficult to increase one’s h-index, and h-indices are exponentially distributed among scientists.
Why is this important?
The h-index was partially introduced as an improvement over simply counting the quantity of a researcher’s publications. A researcher with 10 publications may have a higher h-index than a researcher with 100 publications.
However, as with any other metric, it is possible to ‘game’, or artificially increase, one’s h-index. Some well-established strategies include:
- Self-citation (cf. Italian scientists increase self-citations in response to promotion policy (2)
- Honorary authorship (putting a distinguished researcher on an authorship list often increases citation)
- Publishing on ‘hot topics’
- Writing review papers (often more cited than original studies)
For whom is this important?
The Embassy Editorial team, Iris Lechner contributed to this theme. Latest contribution was Oct 20, 2020
