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Research Impact for Engineering

H-Index Defined

  • H-Index
    The H-index is a popular measure of publishing impact, where an author's H-index is represented by the number of papers (h) with a citation number ≥ h.

    For example, a scientist with an H-index of 14 has published at least 14 papers, each of which have been cited at least 14 times.

How to Look Up Your H-Index

Note: H-index values often vary significantly by database, as each database indexes different sources (e.g., peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, or grey literature), and thus each database's citation counts will be different.
 

  • Scopus
    1. Click "Scopus" above; in the search box, click "Authors" and perform search
    2. Click on the desired author name
    3. See H-index on left side of author profile page 
    4. Click "Analyze Author Output" for additional citation data
       
  • Web of Science
    1. Click "Web of Science" above
    2. In the search box, click "More" and then "Author"
    3. Perform author search, then click "Create Citation Report" on the top right of the results page
       
  • Google Scholar @ UM
    1. Click "Google Scholar @ UM" above
    2. In the main search box, enter author's name or search by article title
    3. In the search results page, click on the author's name to view their Google Scholar profile (note- not all authors have Google Scholar profiles; underlined author names indicate that a profile page exists)

Understanding the H-Index

  • H-Index typically varies by source (e.g., different values in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science).
     
  • H-Index is not field-normalized and is not an accurate comparison of productivity across disciplines.
     
  • H-Index is weighted positively towards mid and late-career researchers as publications have had more time to accrue citations.

H-Index Alternatives

  • The G-index was created by Leo Egghe in 2006 to give more weight to authors' highly cited articles.
     
  • The i10-index is an author-level metric created by Google Scholar and used in Google's My Citations feature.