How to identify your H-Index

H-Index, or Hirsch index, is a number which is assigned to you based on the number of articles you publish and the number of times those articles have been cited by other people. There are several ways in which you can find this number. The three most commonly used are the number reported by ISI Web of Knowledge, SCOPUS and Google Scholar. ISI and SCOPUS are both paid services which the Library provides, while Google Scholar is a free service.

Would an H-Index by any other name?

Google Scholar has a tendency to report everything an author publishes while SCOPUS and ISI only use journal articles. If you are an author who blogs a lot, Google Scholar may be a better number for you than the number reported by SCOPUS or ISI. Also, SCOPUS only reports numbers on publications made after 1995. If you are a scholar whose body of work is mainly before 1995, you may not have an H-Index in SCOPUS. ISI reports on authors going back to the 1940s.

Problems with the H-Index                        

Aside from reporting problems, the number favors authors who have worked on large projects, with more than one author, rather than individual work. The H-Index can be manipulated through self-citation (that is an author citing herself). The H-index also does not differentiate between books and articles, or between types of articles (introductory articles versus more substantive treatises).

What to do if you need to report an H-Index

Report more than one number, identifying where the number was found and explain that there is a large body of work behind the author which really cannot be reduced to an individual number. For more information about the H-Index, please contact the Library.