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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 9
Publication Date: September 25, 2024
DOI:10.14738/assrj.119.17444.
Kawimbe, S. (2024). The h-Index Explained: Tools, Limitations and Strategies for Academic Success. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 11(9). 56-61.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
The h-Index Explained: Tools, Limitations and Strategies for
Academic Success
Sidney Kawimbe
ORCID-0009-0006-1039-5757
ZCAS University – School of Business
ABSTRACT
The h-index, introduced by J.E Hursh in 2005, is a prevalent metric for assessing
academic research productivity and impact. It evaluates a researcher’s cumulative
impact by comparing the number of their publications to the number of citations
they have received. Despite its straightforward computation, the h-index can be
confusing for novice researchers. Various databases like Scopus, Google Scholar,
ResearchGate and Web of Science offer h-index computations, each with unique
features and access requirements. For example, Google Scholar provides h-index
information based on citations indexed by its service, while Web of Sciences offers
a comprehensive profile including total citations and indexed articles. The h-index
is widely used in academia for evaluating candidates for hiring and promotion.
Studies reveal varying benchmarks for different career stages and disciplines, with
higher h-indices typically associated with senior researchers. However, the h-index
has limitations, such as favouring established researchers and not accounting for
citation practices across different fields. Further, some fields tend to have more
literature available than others and there it appears imperative that those fields
with less literature will mostly likely attract less readership resulting in less
citations and hence lower h-Index for researcher and academicians in such fields. It
also does not reflect publication quality or contributions beyond citations.
Researchers can improve their h-index by publishing in high-impact journals,
making research open access, collaborating, staying active in their field, and
promoting their work. Despite its utility, the h-index should be used alongside other
metrics to provide a more holistic view of a researcher’s impact.
Keywords: h-Index, Academic productivity, Citation metrics, Research impact, Impact
Factor.
INTRODUCTION
The h-index is a commonly used metric to measure the productivity and impact of academic
researchers. The h index was proposed by J.E. Hirsch in 2005 and published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and since then, the h-index
has become an important tool for evaluating researchers, departments, and institutions. The
calculation of the h-index is relatively simple, yet it confuses many authors and researchers.
There are several websites where researchers can find their h-index auto calculated. While the
h-index has several advantages, such as providing a simple and objective measure of a
researcher’s impact, there are also some limitations to its use. For example, the h-index does
not take into account the quality of the publications or the context in which they were cited.
Research impact is a term used to describe the influence of a scholar’s work. Research impact
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Kawimbe, S. (2024). The h-Index Explained: Tools, Limitations and Strategies for Academic Success. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
11(9). 56-61.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.119.17444
metrics are quantitative methods used to measure the research impact of individual
researchers, a group of scholars, or that of a scientific journal. Instances of impact metrics
include citation count, journal Impact Factors (IF), the h-index, and others. The primary
purpose of the h-index is to evaluate the cumulative impact of an individual’s scholarly work. It
compares author’s publications to citations, measuring quantity with quality. This article
outlines all there is to know about the h-index.
WHERE TO GET h-INDEX
The evaluation of the scientific work of a scientist has long attracted significant interest, due to
the benefits from obtaining an unbiased and fair criterion. Certain bibliometric methods are
used frequently in order to evaluate the scientific productivity of a scientist such as counting
the total number of publications measure productivity of a scientist, but does not take the
importance and impact into account which the publications resulting from the data have
generated; another method is to investigate contributions to the so-called High-Impact Papers
(HIP), which resembles the most influential papers in specific field. Measuring contributions to
high-impact papers is more balanced than other bibliometric methods, but the values per
scientist are much more difficult to find. The h-Index can be obtained from various avenues
such as:
Scopus
This database, provided by Elsevier, is a popular citation database that provides h-index
information and other metrics, such as total citations and year-wise citations. Researchers can
search for any name from the home page by clicking on “View your author profile” and
searching by surname and name. However, we suggest creating a free account to track your
own articles and citations. From the same homepage, the authors can also check the articles
published and citation count of any journal by clicking on “view journal rankings.”
ResearchGate
This social networking site for researchers provides h-index information and other metrics,
such as total citations and year-wise citations. To get the h-index in ResearchGate, one needs to
create an account. Only published authors or invitees can create an account.
Although ResearchGate suggests using the institutional email address, without it authors can
open an account too. The authors need to send proof of publication for the creation of an
account by a noninstitutional email address. In addition, those who are already in ResearchGate
can send invitation to others to open an account.
We of Science
This database is maintained by Clarivate, and it is one of the most widely used citation
databases. Previously, Researcher ID was provided by Thomson Reuters. Now, the Researcher
ID is provided by Web of Science (WOS) that is maintained by the parent company Clarivate.
The creation of an account is free in WOS. After creating the account, an author can view their
own details and also search for other researchers in the database. In the profile, WOS provides
h-index information and other metrics, such as total citations, number of WOS-indexed articles,
and number of citing articles.
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 9, September-2024
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Google Scholar
Perhaps it is the most used website by scholars around the world. Google Scholar provides
h-index information for authors based on the citations of their papers as indexed by Google
Scholar. It is a free service provided by Google Scholar, and any researcher can open an account.
However, if the researcher has an institutional email address, then the account can be made
public after verifying the email. The authors can observe the year-wise citation count for a quick
idea about the trend of citations over the years. In this discourse, the author demonstrates how
h-index is calculated in Google Scholar which is widely used by most institutions and how one
can improve the score.
Table No 1: h-index of an author who has 10 papers
SN Papers Citation Paper No No of Citations
1 A 10 Paper 1 34
2 B 20 Paper 2 20
3 C 12 Paper 3 18
4 D 18 Paper 4 15
5 E 2 Paper 5 12
6 F 15 Paper 6 10
7 G 5 Paper 7* 8
8 H 8 Paper 8 5
9 I 34 Paper 9 4
10 J 4 Paper 10 2
The h-index of the author is 7. A total of seven of the papers got at least seven citations each.
Eight of the papers have not received at least eight citations. The author’s h-index will be 8
when “Paper 8” gets additional three or more than three citations. The author’s h-index will be
9 when “Paper 7” gets additional one or more than one, “Paper 8” gets additional four or more
than four, and “Paper 9” gets additional five or more than five citations.
USAGE OF h-INDEX IN ACADEMIA
There is no thumb rule of the level of h-index for hiring professionals or promotion of faculties.
However, this index can be used by the universities and research institutions for comparison of
impact among the candidates for hiring or promotion. In addition, universities are commonly
interested in recruiting and or promoting a researcher with higher publication impact as the
impact would be a feather to the crown of the university and enhance the status of such
university. A study by Wang et al. (2022) in the Department of Surgery, University of Alabama
at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States, found that a faculty has a median h-index
of 6 at hiring, 11 during the promotion from assistant to associate professor, and 17 during the
promotion from associate to full professor. In Zambia, the higher Education Authority (HEA),
body charged with the responsibility to regulating Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has
placed a requirement for recruitment or promotion to the position of Vice Chancellor of
professorship without mention of h-index. However, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have
taken a lead in propagating reliance on h-index for senior positions. For instance, a job
advertisement for a position of Deputy Executive Director for National Institute for Public
Administration (NIPA), a leading provider of high-quality professional management and
business training and research required candidates applying for the job to have a minimum h- index of 6 for them to be shortlisted