H-Index Overview
The h-index, or Hirsch index, measures the impact of a particular scientist rather than a journal. "It is defined as the highest number of publications of a scientist that received h or more citations each while the other publications have not more than h citations each." 1 For example, a scholar with an h-index of 5 had published 5 papers, each of which has been cited by others at least 5 times. The links below will take you to other areas within this guide which explain how to find an author's h-index using specific platforms.
NOTE: An individual's h-index may be very different in different databases. This is because the databases index different journals and cover different years. For instance, Scopus only considers work from 1996 or later, while the Web of Science calculates an h-index using all years that an institution has subscribed to. (So a Web of Science h-index might look different when searched through different institutions.)
Finding an Individual h-index Using Publish or Perish
Finding h-Index using Publish or Perish
1. The Publish or Perish site uses data from Google Scholar. An explanation of citation metrics is available here.
2. Publish or Perish is available in Windows and Linux formats and can be downloaded at no cost from the Publish or Perish website.
3. Once you have downloaded the application, you can use Publish or Perish to find h-Index by entering a simple author search. You can exclude names or deselect subject areas to the right of the search boxes to help with disambiguation of authors.
4. The h-Index will display on the results page.
5. You can narrow your search results further by deselecting individual articles. The h-Index will update dynamically as you do this.
