Web of Science

In 2005, J.E. Hirsch proposed a new way of evaluating the scientific literature.  His method, first published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (102(46)), is called the h-index.  This method has grown in popularity and is now calculated within Web of Science.  According to the original article,

A scientist has index h if h of his or her N_p papers have at least h citations each and the other (N_p – h) papers have ≤h citations each.

This page provides a jumping off point to the literature on the h-index.

In late September there was a new citation metric discussed in Nature. The Acuna-Allesina-Kording formula builds on the h-index.

Future impact: Predicting scientific success
Daniel E. Acuna,,Stefano Allesina & Konrad P. Kording
Nature 489,201–202(13 September 2012)doi:10.1038/489201a
http://quicklinks.library.colostate.edu/?q=sbzrzu (link works for CSU)

DOI 10.1038/489201a

New Formula Beats Citation Index and Can Predict Success, 3 scientists say
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/scientists-offer-new-formula-to-predict-career-success/30912

H-INDEX, Brief Information from Web of Science

The h-index1 is based on a list of publications ranked in descending order by the Times Cited. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in the list that have N or more citations. This metric is useful because it discounts the disproportionate weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited.

Calculating the h-index Value - 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. Moreover, the calculation only includes items in Web of Science - books and articles in non-covered journals are not included.

Example of Web of Science Citation Report with H index in bottom right corner

This example shows and H index of 35, so 35 of the 78 articles have at least 35 citations.

The number of articles published on the H-index has grown exponentially since 2005.  Selected articles are included below for your convenience..  More information on the h-index can be found through Web of Science.

Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569-16572. [Original H-index article]

Ball, P. (2007). Achievement index climbs the ranks. [News Item]. Nature, 448(7155), 737-737.

Bar-Ilan, J. (2008). Which h-index? - A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar. Scientometrics, 74(2), 257-271.

Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H. D. (2007). What do we know about the h index? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(9), 1381-1385.

Hirsch, J. E. (2007). Does the h index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(49), 19193-19198.

Jacso, P. (2008). The pros and cons of computing the h-index using Web of Science. Online Information Review, 32(5), 673-688.

Vanclay, J. K. (2007). On the robustness of the h-index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(10), 1547-1550.