h index for a phd

What Is Good H-Index? H-Index Required For An Academic Position

In the academic world, the h-index score stands as a pivotal metric, gauging the impact and breadth of a researcher’s work. Understanding what constitutes a good h-index is crucial for academics at all stages, from budding PhD students to seasoned professors.

This article looks into the h-index, exploring what scores are considered impressive across various disciplines and career stages.

• PhD Student: An h-index between 1 and 5 is typical for PhD students nearing the end of their program, reflecting their early stage in academic publishing.
• Postdoc and Assistant Professor: Early career researchers like postdoctoral fellows or assistant professors often find an h-index around 5 to 10 impressive, indicating a solid start in their respective fields.
• Associate Professor: At this more advanced stage, an h-index of 10 or more is generally expected, reflecting a consistent record of impactful research.
• Full Professor: For full professors, an h-index of 15 or higher is often seen, indicating a long and impactful career in research and academia.

How To Calculate Your H-Index Score?

In the academic world, the h-index score is a critical metric, essentially acting like a report card for scholars.

The h-index is a measure of a researcher’s productivity and impact. H-index was designed to assess the number of papers published and the number of citations each paper receives. 

Now that you know what is a h-index score, you may now wonder if you can find out your own. Good thing is that platforms like Google Scholar or Web of Science can come in handy.

They track your number of publications and the number of times those publications are cited, crunching these numbers into your h-index.

This number can vary based on the field and years of research experience. A full professor might be expected to have a higher h-index, reflecting more years of impactful research.

Google Scholar

To find out your h-index score from Google Scholar, you can follow the steps below:

• Create a Google Scholar Profile : If you don’t already have one, go to Google Scholar and create a profile. Fill in your academic details and affiliations.
• Add Publications : Ensure all your research publications are listed in your profile. You can add them manually or import them if they are already available on Google Scholar.
• Verify your Publications : Make sure the publications listed are indeed yours, as sometimes publications from other authors with similar names might appear.
• Check the Citations Section : Once your profile is complete and updated, look for the ‘Citations’ section on your profile page. This is usually located at the top and easy to spot.
• Find Your H-Index : In the Citations section, you will see your h-index listed among other citation metrics like the total number of citations and the i10-index.

Web Of Science

To find out your h-index score from Web Of Science, you can follow the steps below:

• Access Web of Science : Go to the Web of Science website. Access may require an institutional login, depending on your affiliation.
• Search for Your Name : Use the author search function to find your publications. Ensure you search with variations of your name if you’ve published under different names or initials.
• Create a Citation Report : Once your publications are listed, select them and create a citation report. This option is typically found above the list of your publications.
• View Your H-Index : In the citation report, your h-index will be displayed. This number is calculated based on the total number of papers you’ve published and the number of citations each paper has received.

What H-Index Is Considered Good For A PhD Student?

For a PhD student, the world of academic metrics can be daunting, especially when it comes to the h-index, a measure that intertwines the number of publications with their citation impact.

So, what h-index score should you, as a PhD student, aim for?

A “good” h-index can vary based on your field of study and the stage of your PhD program.

Generally, for PhD students, a lower h-index is expected and completely normal. You’re just beginning your journey in academic publishing.

An h-index between 1 and 5 might be typical for students nearing the end of their PhD. This means you have 1 to 5 publications that have been cited at least 1 to 5 times, respectively.

Your h-index can be calculated using tools like Google Scholar or Web of Science. These platforms track your published papers and the number of citations each receives.

As a PhD student, your focus should be on publishing quality research in reputable journals, as this will gradually increase your h-index.

Remember, while a higher h-index is beneficial for future academic positions, it’s not the only metric that matters. Your research’s quality, relevance, and impact in your field are equally important. A single highly influential paper might open more doors than several less impactful ones.

What Are Good H-Index Required For An Academic Position?

your h-index can be as crucial as your research itself. This metric, a blend of productivity and impact, is often scrutinized by hiring committees.

But what number should you aim for? A good h-index varies by field and career stage.

PostDoc, Assistant Professors

For early career researchers, like postdoctoral fellows or assistant professors, an h-index around 5 to 10 is often impressive.

It shows you’ve made a mark in your field, with a number of papers that have been cited at least that many times. 

Associate Professor, Full Professor

In more senior roles, such as a tenured associate professor or full professor, expectations rise.

Here, an h-index of 10 or 15 might be the minimum, with higher numbers not uncommon.

This single number, while important, doesn’t tell the whole story. A young researcher might have a lower h-index simply due to less time in the field. Moreover, some fields tend to have higher citation rates, which can inflate h-index scores.

It’s wise to keep an eye on your h-index, especially if you’re eyeing:

• Competitive academic positions,
• Research funding
• Collaboration opportunities.

Improving your h-index involves not just publishing papers, but ensuring they are of high quality and relevance, increasing the likelihood of citations.

In sum, a good h-index is one that matches your career stage and field, reflecting both the quantity and impact of your work. However, it’s not the sole measure of your worth as a researcher.

The breadth and depth of your contributions, beyond just citation counts, also paint a vivid picture of your academic and scientific impact.

What Metric Influences H-Index Score?

Your h-index score is influenced by several key factors:

• Number of Publications : The more papers you publish, the greater the potential for citations. It’s a numbers game, but quality over quantity should be your mantra. High-caliber papers in respected journals often garner more attention and citations.
• Citations Per Publication : Your h-index heavily relies on how often your papers are cited. Even if you have a plethora of publications, your h-index won’t shine if they’re seldom cited.
• Years of Research Experience : A young researcher might have a lower h-index compared to a full professor, who has had more time to build their citation record.
• Research Field : The h-index varies widely across disciplines. Fields with rapid publication and citation rates like biomedical sciences often see higher h-index scores than, say, humanities. So, a good h-index in one field might be considered low in another.
• Access to Research Collaborations : Collaborations can boost your h-index. Working with other researchers, can increase the visibility and citation potential of your papers. However, too many authors on a single paper might dilute the perceived contribution of each.

Remember, while a high h-index can be indicative of a significant academic impact, it’s not the sole measure of your scientific worth. It’s a good idea to give your h-index some consideration, but also focus on the broader spectrum of your academic contributions.

How To Increase H-Index Score?

Increasing your h-index, a metric reflecting the impact and productivity of your academic work, is a strategic goal for many researchers.

This single number, representing the intersection of the quantity of your publications and their citation impact, can play a pivotal role in securing research grants and academic positions.

To boost your h-index, focus on publishing quality research in well-regarded journals. A paper published in a respected journal is more likely to be cited, and each citation nudges your h-index upwards.

For example, if you’re an assistant professor with an h-index of 5, aiming for journals with high visibility in your field can help you reach a higher h-index, making you more competitive for positions like associate or full professor.

Collaboration is another key strategy. Co-authoring with established researchers can increase the reach and citation potential of your papers.

This, however, comes with a caveat: the more number of authors on a paper, the more diluted your perceived contribution might be. Aim for a balance in co-authorship.

Active engagement in the academic community also matters. Increase citations on your work by:

• Presenting at conferences,
• networking, and
• promoting your work on platforms like Google Scholar or Web of Science.

Remember, the h-index varies by field and career stage. A good h-index for a young researcher might be 10, while more senior academics might aim for higher numbers. Using databases like Google Scholar, you can track your number of cited publications and calculate your h-index.

While a higher h-index can bolster your academic profile, it’s not the sole indicator of your scholarly worth – low h-index score is not a dealbreaker in many cases. It’s wise to consider it alongside other measures of your academic and scientific impact.

Good H-Index Score May Vary

A good h-index score is relative, varying across academic fields and career stages. While it offers a valuable snapshot of a researcher’s impact and productivity, it’s important to view it as one part of a larger picture.

Aspiring for a higher h-index should go hand in hand with maintaining the quality and relevance of research. Ultimately, the h-index is a useful tool, but it’s the depth and innovation of your work that truly define your academic legacy.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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What Is a Good H-Index Required for an Academic Position?

Posted by Rene Tetzner | Sep 3, 2021 | Career Advice for Academics , How To Get Published | 0 |

What Is a Good H-Index Required for an Academic Position? Metrics are important. Even scholars who may not entirely agree with the ways in which academic and scientific impact is currently measured and used cannot deny that metrics play a significant role in determining who receives research grants, employment offers and desirable promotions. The h-index is only one among various kinds of metrics now applied to the research-based writing of professional scholars, but it is an increasingly significant one. Introduced by the physicist Jorge Hirsch in a paper published in 2005, the h-index was designed to assess the quantity and quality of a scientist’s contributions and predict his or her productivity and influence in the coming years. However, its use and importance have quickly expanded beyond physics and the sciences into a wide variety of disciplines and fields of study. If you are applying for a scientific or academic position, hoping for a promotion or in need of research funding, it will therefore be wise to give your h-index score some consideration, but within reason. In some fields, the h-index and other forms of metrics play a very small part if any in hiring and funding, and there are still many other means used by hiring and funding committees to assess scholarly contributions.

The h-index is considered preferable to metrics that measure only a researcher’s number of publications or the number of times those publications have been cited. This is because it combines the two, considering both publications and citations to arrive at a particular value. A scholar who has five publications that have been cited at least five times has an h-index of 5, whereas a scholar with ten publications that have been cited ten times has an h-index of 10. Publication and citation patterns differ markedly across disciplines and fields of study, and the expectations of hiring and funding bodies vary depending on the level and type of position and the kind and size of research project, so it is impossible to say exactly what might be considered an acceptable or competitive h-index in a given situation. H-index scores between 3 and 5 seem common for new assistant professors, scores between 8 and 12 fairly standard for promotion to the position of tenured associate professor, and scores between 15 and 20 about right for becoming a full professor. Be aware, however, that these are gross generalisations and actual figures vary enormously among disciplines and fields: there are, for instance, many full professors, deans and chancellors with very low h-index scores, and an exceptional young researcher with an h-index of 10 or 15 might conceivably still be working on a post doctorate.

As a general rule in many fields, an h-index that matches the number of years a scholar has been working in the field is a respectable score. Hirsch in fact suggested that the h-index be used in conjunction with a scholar’s active research time to arrive at what is known as Hirsch’s individual m. It is calculated by dividing a scientist’s h-index by the number of years that have passed since the first publication, with a score of 1 being very good indeed, 2 being outstanding and 3 truly exceptional. This means that if you have published at least one well-cited document each year since your first publication – a decent textual output by any measure – you are among a successful group of scholars, and if you have published two or three times that number of well-cited documents over the same period of time, you are among the intellectual superstars of your discipline and probably of your time. To put this into perspective, from what I can find online it looks like Stephen Hawking has a score of about 1.6 by this calculation. If you can approach a hiring committee or funding body with anything close to that, you are certainly going to be a serious contender in the competition.

The h-index as a measure of both the quantity and quality of scholarly achievement is considered quite reliable and robust, so it has proved incredibly popular and is now applied not only to individual researchers, but also to research groups and projects, to scholarly journals and publishers, to academic and scientific departments, to entire universities and even to entire countries. As with all metrics, however, the h-index is subject to a number of biases and limitations, so there are significant problems associated with relying solely on h-index scores when making important research and career decisions. The h-index does not, for example, account for publications with citation numbers far above a researcher’s h-index or distinguish any difference between publications with a single author or many. Older publications are counted exactly as more recent ones are and older scholars benefit, whether they have published anything new in years or not. Neither the length of a publication nor the nature of each citation (positive or negative) is considered, so those measures of quantity and quality are not part of the picture. Early career researchers who take the time to delve deeply into an important problem and eventually produce an excellent article and scholars at any stage in their careers who dedicate time to teaching or practical applications of research will have lower scores than those who crank out mediocre articles based on uninteresting research that is nonetheless cited by their colleagues. Finally, the databases from which the h-index and other metrics are determined vary in the types of documents they consider and the fields of study they include, so the same scholar will not receive the same h value across all of them, and accurate comparison across fields and disciplines is impossible.

These and other problems have generated a number of adjustments that are rather similar to Hirsch’s individual m, which, as discussed above, considers a scholar’s active research time in relation to his or her h-index. The g-index gives greater weight to publications whose citation counts exceed a researcher’s h value; the hi index corrects for the number of authors; the hc index corrects for the age of publications, with recent citations earning more counts; and the c-index considers collaboration distance between the author of a publication and the authors citing it. Solutions for comparison between disciplines and fields have included dividing the h-index scores of scholars by the h-index averages in their respective fields to arrive at results that can be compared, but defining fields can be tricky, and larger fields of study with more researchers naturally generate more citations. The databases used for scholarly metrics are constantly upgrading and broadening their inclusiveness to render metrics like the h-index more truly representative of a researcher’s actual productivity and impact, so the accuracy and consistency of these tools are likely to continue improving. However, no new numbers or calculations can add what all of these metrics lack, and that is research content – the valuable and unique content that makes the publication of research a worthy task in the first place.

Committees gathered to hire or promote faculty or to select the recipients of research grants rarely rely solely on metrics when making their decisions. If they are doing their jobs properly, they combine what they can gather from metrics with other information about candidates and their scholarly impact. They do not just notice how many times the papers of candidates have been cited; they read those papers and consider their content, and they pay attention to the other activities of the scholars they are considering. This wider perspective is appropriate for an applicant as well, so if you are polishing your CV, putting together a grant application or preparing for a job interview, look over your own unique achievements with a kindly yet critical eye and consider them in direct relation to what the job posting or grant regulations indicate is wanted. If you happen to have a wonderful h-index score or any other impressive metrics, by all means flaunt them, and if you fear that a low h value will compromise your career aspirations, do what you can to have your publications with lower citation counts read and used more often, update your profiles on the relevant databases, and publish the type of document sure to garner citations in your field, such as a review article.

Do keep in mind, however, that hiring and funding committees are often looking for far more than large numbers of highly cited publications. Admittedly, they rarely balk at them, but universities are also seeking excellent teachers, advisors and administrators, so play up those skills and any related experience you have, and remember that financial supporters of research may be keen to fund scholars who can successfully manage and complete projects, even and perhaps especially if part of the training they offer younger researchers means that their students tend to publish most of the results. Finally, an active online presence in your field established through sharing your research via blogs, professional platforms and social media might not garner the same respect as formal publications, but it can count for a great deal when many universities are working to increase their online activities and funding bodies working to democratise the publication of the research they support. Generally speaking, committees considering applications will be even more likely to google the names of candidates and applicants than to look up the metrics associated with them, so assume that both will be done and ensure that what can be found shares excellent research content and leaves a desirable professional impression of you and your work.

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What Is a Good H-Index Required for an Academic Position? The h-index is used along with applicants research & skills to measure their impact

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Maximizing your research identity and measuring research impact

• Researcher Profiles
• h-index for resesarchers-definition

h-index for journals

H-index for institutions, computing your own h-index, ways to increase your h-index, limitations of the h-index, variations of the h-index.

• Using Scopus to find a researcher's h-index
• Additional resources for finding a researcher's h-index
• Journal Impact Factor & other journal rankings
• Altmetrics This link opens in a new window
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• Open Access This link opens in a new window
• Methods for increasing researcher impact & visibility

h-index for researchers-definition

• The h-index is a measure used to indicate the impact and productivity of a researcher based on how often his/her publications have been cited.
• The physicist, Jorge E. Hirsch, provides the following definition for the h-index:  A scientist has index h if  h of his/her N p  papers have at least h citations each, and the other (N p  − h) papers have no more than h citations each. (Hirsch, JE (15 November 2005) PNAS 102 (46) 16569-16572)
• The h -index is based on the highest number of papers written by the author that have had at least the same number of citations.
• A researcher with an h-index of 6 has published six papers that have been cited at least six times by other scholars.  This researcher may have published more than six papers, but only six of them have been cited six or more times. 

Whether or not a h-index is considered strong, weak or average depends on the researcher's field of study and how long they have been active.  The h-index of an individual should be considered in the context of the h-indices of equivalent researchers in the same field of study.

Definition :  The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a journal with a h-index of 20 has published 20 articles that have been cited 20 or more times.

Available from:

• SJR (Scimago Journal & Country Rank)

Whether or not a h-index is considered strong, weak or average depends on the discipline the journal covers and how long it has published. The h-index of a journal should be considered in the context of the h-indices of other journals in similar disciplines.

Definition :  The h-index of an institution is the largest number h such that at least h articles published by researchers at the institution were cited at least h times each. For example, if an institution has a h-index of 200 it's researchers have published 200 articles that have been cited 200 or more times.

Available from: exaly

In a spreadsheet, list the number of times each of your publications has been cited by other scholars. 

Sort the spreadsheet in descending order by the number of  times each publication is cited.  Then start counting down until the article number is equal to or not greater than the times cited.

Article                   Times Cited

1                              50          

2                              15          

3                              12

4                              10

5                              8

6                              7              == =>h index is 6

7                              5             

8                              1

How to successfully boost your h-index (enago academy, 2019)

Glänzel, Wolfgang On the Opportunities and Limitations of the H-index. , 2006

• h -index based upon data from the last 5 years
•  i-10 index is the number of articles by an author that have at least ten citations. 
•  i-10 index was created by Google Scholar .
• Used to compare researchers with different lengths of publication history
• m-index =   ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________ h-index _______________                      # of years since author’s 1 st publication

Using Scopus to find an researcher's h-index

Additional resources for finding a researcher's h-index.

Web of Science Core Collection or Web of Science All Databases

• Perform an author search
• Create a citation report for that author.
• The h-index will be listed in the report.

Set up your author profile in the following three resources.  Each resource will compute your h-index.  Your h-index may vary since each of these sites collects data from different resources.

• Google Scholar Citations Computes h-index based on publications and cited references in Google Scholar .
• Researcher ID
• Computes h-index based on publications and cited references in the last 20 years of Web of Science .
• << Previous: Researcher Profiles
• Next: Journal Impact Factor & other journal rankings >>
• Last Updated: Sep 9, 2024 3:50 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/researchidentity

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What is a Good H-index?

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Table of Contents

You have finally overcome the exhausting process of a successful paper publication and are just thinking that it’s time to relax for a while. Maybe you are right to do so, but don’t take very long…you see, just like the research process itself, pursuing a career as an author of published works is also about expecting results. In other words, today there are tools that can tell you if your publication(s) is/are impacting the number of people you believed it would (or not). One of the most common tools researchers use is the H-index score.

Knowing how impactful your publications are among your audience is key to defining your individual performance as a researcher and author. This helps the scientific community compare professionals in the same research field (and career length). Although scoring intellectual activities is often an issue of debate, it also brings its own benefits:

• Inside the scientific community: A standardization of researchers’ performances can be useful for comparison between them, within their field of research. For example, H-index scores are commonly used in the recruitment processes for academic positions and taken into consideration when applying for academic or research grants. At the end of the day, the H-index is used as a sign of self-worth for scholars in almost every field of research.
• In an individual point of view: Knowing the impact of your work among the target audience is especially important in the academic world. With careful analysis and the right amount of reflection, the H-index can give you clues and ideas on how to design and implement future projects. If your paper is not being cited as much as you expected, try to find out what the problem might have been. For example, was the research content irrelevant for the audience? Was the selected journal wrong for your paper? Was the text poorly written? For the latter, consider Elsevier’s text editing and translation services in order to improve your chances of being cited by other authors and improving your H-index.

What is my H-index?

Basically, the H-index score is a standard scholarly metric in which the number of published papers, and the number of times their author is cited, is put into relation. The formula is based on the number of papers (H) that have been cited, and how often, compared to those that have not been cited (or cited as much). See the table below as a practical example:

In this case, the researcher scored an H-index of 6, since he has 6 publications that have been cited at least 6 times. The remaining articles, or those that have not yet reached 6 citations, are left aside.

A good H-index score depends not only on a prolific output but also on a large number of citations by other authors. It is important, therefore, that your research reaches a wide audience, preferably one to whom your topic is particularly interesting or relevant, in a clear, high-quality text. Young researchers and inexperienced scholars often look for articles that offer academic security by leaving no room for doubts or misinterpretations.

What is a good H-Index score journal?

Journals also have their own H-Index scores. Publishing in a high H-index journal maximizes your chances of being cited by other authors and, consequently, may improve your own personal H-index score. Some of the “giants” in the highest H-index scores are journals from top universities, like Oxford University, with the highest score being 146, according to Google Scholar.

Knowing the H-index score of journals of interest is useful when searching for the right one to publish your next paper. Even if you are just starting as an author, and you still don’t have your own H-index score, you may want to start in the right place to skyrocket your self-worth.

See below some of the most commonly used databases that help authors find their H-index values:

• Elsevier’s Scopus : Includes Citation Tracker, a feature that shows how often an author has been cited. To this day, it is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
• Clarivate Analytics Web of Science : a digital platform that provides the H-index with its Citation Reports feature
• Google Scholar : a growing database that calculates H-index scores for those who have a profile.

Maximize the impact of your research by publishing high-quality articles. A richly edited text with flawless grammar may be all you need to capture the eye of other authors and researchers in your field. With Elsevier, you have the guarantee of excellent output, no matter the topic or your target journal.

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Do researchers know what the h-index is? And how do they estimate its importance?

• Open access
• Published: 26 April 2021
• Volume 126 , pages 5489–5508, ( 2021 )

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• Pantea Kamrani   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8880-8105 1 ,
• Isabelle Dorsch   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7391-5189 1 &
• Wolfgang G. Stock   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-3225 1 , 2  

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The h-index is a widely used scientometric indicator on the researcher level working with a simple combination of publication and citation counts. In this article, we pursue two goals, namely the collection of empirical data about researchers’ personal estimations of the importance of the h-index for themselves as well as for their academic disciplines, and on the researchers’ concrete knowledge on the h-index and the way of its calculation. We worked with an online survey (including a knowledge test on the calculation of the h-index), which was finished by 1081 German university professors. We distinguished between the results for all participants, and, additionally, the results by gender, generation, and field of knowledge. We found a clear binary division between the academic knowledge fields: For the sciences and medicine the h-index is important for the researchers themselves and for their disciplines, while for the humanities and social sciences, economics, and law the h-index is considerably less important. Two fifths of the professors do not know details on the h-index or wrongly deem to know what the h-index is and failed our test. The researchers’ knowledge on the h-index is much smaller in the academic branches of the humanities and the social sciences. As the h-index is important for many researchers and as not all researchers are very knowledgeable about this author-specific indicator, it seems to be necessary to make researchers more aware of scholarly metrics literacy.

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Introduction

In 2005, Hirsch introduced his famous h-index. It combines two important measures of scientometrics, namely the publication count of a researcher (as an indicator for his or her research productivity) and the citation count of those publications (as an indicator for his or her research impact). Hirsch ( 2005 , p. 1569) defines, “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.” If a researcher has written 100 articles, for instance, 20 of these having been cited at least 20 times and the other 80 less than that, then the researcher’s h-index will be 20 (Stock and Stock 2013 , p. 382). Following Hirsch, the h-index “gives an estimate of the importance, significance, and broad impact of a scientist’s cumulative research contribution” (Hirsch 2005 , p. 16,572). Hirsch ( 2007 ) assumed that his h-index may predict researchers’ future achievements. Looking at this in retro-perspective, Hirsch had hoped to create an “objective measure of scientific achievement” (Hirsch 2020 , p. 4) but also starts to believe that this could be the opposite. Indeed, it became a measure of scientific achievement, however a very questionable one.

Also in 2005, Hirsch derives the m-index with the researcher’s “research age” in mind. Let the number of years after a researcher’s first publication be t p . The m-index is the quotient of the researcher’s h-index and her or his research age: m p  =  h p / t p (Hirsch 2005 , p. 16,571). An m -value of 2 would mean, for example, that a researcher has reached an h-value of 20 after 10 research years. Meanwhile, the h-index is strongly wired in our scientific system. It became one of the “standard indicators” in scientific information services and can be found on many general scientific bibliographic databases. Besides, it is used in various contexts and generated a lot of research and discussions. This indicator is used or rather misused—dependent on the way of seeing—in decisions about researchers’ career paths, e.g. as part of academics’ evaluation concerning awards, funding allocations, promotion, and tenure (Ding et al. 2020 ; Dinis-Oliveira 2019 ; Haustein and Larivière 2015 ; Kelly and Jennions 2006 ). For Jappe ( 2020 , p. 13), one of the arguments for the use of the h-index in evaluation studies is its “robustness with regards to incomplete publication and citation data.” Contrary, the index is well-known for its inconsistencies, incapability for comparisons between researchers with different career stages, and missing field normalization (Costas and Bordons 2007 ; Waltman and van Eck 2012 ). There already exist various advantages and disadvantages lists on the h-index (e.g. Rousseau et al. 2018 ). And it is still questionable what the h-index underlying concept represents, due to its conflation of the two concepts’ productivity and impact resulting in one single number (Sugimoto and Larivière, 2018 ).

It is easy to identify lots of variants of the h-index concerning both, the basis of the data as well as the concrete formula of calculation. Working with the numbers of publications and their citations, there are the data based upon the leading general bibliographical information services Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Google Scholar, and, additionally, on ResearchGate (da Silva and Dobranszki 2018 ); working with publication numbers and the number of the publications’ reads, there are data based upon Mendeley (Askeridis 2018 ). Depending of an author’s visibility on an information service (Dorsch 2017 ), we see different values for the h-indices for WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar (Bar-Ilan 2008 ), mostly following the inequation h( R ) WoS  < h( R ) Scopus  < h( R ) Google Scholar for a given researcher R (Dorsch et al. 2018 ). Having in mind that WoS consists of many databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Book Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index, etc.) and that libraries not always provide access to all (and not to all years) it is no surprise that we will find different h-indices on WoS depending on the subscribed sources and years (Hu et al. 2020 ).

After Hirsch’s publication of the two initial formulas (i.e. the h-index and the time-adjusted m-index) many scientists felt required to produce similar, but only slightly mathematically modified formulas not leading to brand-new scientific insights (Alonso et al. 2009 ; Bornmann et al. 2008 ; Jan and Ahmad 2020 ), as there are high correlations between the values of the variants (Bornmann et al. 2011 ).

How do researchers estimate the importance of the h-index? Do they really know the concrete definition and its formula? In a survey for Springer Nature ( N  = 2734 authors of Springer Nature and Biomed Central), Penny ( 2016 , slide 22) found that 67% of the asked scientists use the h-index and further 22% are aware of it but have not used it before; however, there are 10% of respondents who do not know what the h-index is. Rousseau and Rousseau ( 2017 ) asked members of the International Association of Agricultural Economists and gathered 138 answers. Here, more than two-fifth of all questionees did not know what the h-index is (Rousseau and Rousseau 2017 , p. 481). Among Taiwanese researchers ( n  = 417) 28.78% self-reported to have heard about the h-index and fully understood the indicator, whereas 22.06% never heard about it. The remaining stated to hear about it and did not know its content or only some aspects (Chen and Lin 2018 ). For academics in Ireland ( n  = 19) “journal impact factor, h-index, and RG scores” are familiar concepts, but “the majority cannot tell how these metrics are calculated or what they represent” (Ma and Ladisch 2019 , p. 214). Likewise, the interviewed academics ( n  = 9) could name “more intricate metrics like h-index or Journal Impact Factor, [but] were barely able to explain correctly how these indicators are calculated” (Lemke et al. 2019 , p. 11). The knowledge about scientometric indicators in general “is quite heterogeneous among researchers,” Rousseau and Rousseau ( 2017 , p. 482) state. This is confirmed by further studies on the familiarity, perception or usage of research evaluation metrics in general (Aksnes and Rip 2009 ; Derrick and Gillespie 2013 ; Haddow and Hammarfelt 2019 ; Hammarfelt and Haddow 2018 ).

In a blog post, Tetzner ( 2019 ) speculates on concrete numbers of a “good” h-index for academic positions. Accordingly, an h-index between 3 and 5 is good for a new assistant professor, an index between 8 and 12 for a tenured associate professor, and, finally, an index of more than 15 for a full professor. However, these numbers are gross generalizations without a sound empirical foundation. As our data are from Germany, the question arises: What kinds of tools do German funders, universities, etc. use for research evaluation? Unfortunately, there are only few publications on this topic. For scientists at German universities, bibliometric indicators (including the h-index and the impact factor) are important or very important for scientific reputation for more than 55% of the questionees (Neufeld and Johann 2016 , p.136). Those indicators have also relevance or even great relevance concerning hiring on academic positions in the estimation of more than 40% of the respondents (Neufeld and Johann 2016 , p.129). In a ranking of aspects of reputation of medical scientists, the h-index takes rank 7 (with a mean value of 3.4 with 5 being the best one) out of 17 evaluation criteria. Top-ranked indicators are the reputation of the journals of the scientists’ publications (4.1), the scientists’ citations (4.0), and their publication amount (3.7) (Krempkow et al. 2011 , p. 37). For hiring of psychology professors in Germany, the h-index had factual relevance for the tenure decision with a mean value of 3.64 (on a six-point scale) and ranks on position 12 out of more than 40 criteria for professorship (Abele-Brehm and Bühner 2016 ). Here, the number of peer-reviewed publications is top-ranked (mean value of 5.11). Obviously, these few studies highlight that the h-index indeed has relevance for research evaluation in Germany next to publication and citation numbers.

What is still a research desideratum is an in-depth description of researchers’ personal estimations on the h-index and an analysis of possible differences concerning researchers’ generation, their gender, and the discipline.

What is about the researchers’ state of knowledge on the h-index? Of course, we may ask, “What’s your knowledge on the h-index? Estimate on a scale from 1 to 5!” But personal estimations are subjective and do not substitute a test of knowledge (Kruger and Dunning 1999 ). Knowledge tests on researchers’ state of knowledge concerning the h-index are—to our best knowledge—a research desideratum, too.

In this article, we pursue two goals, namely on the one hand—similar to Buela-Casal and Zych ( 2012 ) on the impact factor—the collection of data about researchers’ personal estimations of the importance of the h-index for themselves as well as their discipline, and on the other hand data on the researchers’ concrete knowledge on the h-index and the way of its calculation. In short, these are our research questions:

RQ1: How do researchers estimate the importance of the h-index?

RQ2: What is the researchers’ knowledge on the h-index?

In order to answer RQ1, we asked researchers on their personal opinions; to answer RQ2, we additionally performed a test of their knowledge.

Online survey

Online-survey-based questionnaires provide a means of generating quantitative data. Furthermore, they ensure anonymity, and thus, a high degree of unbiasedness to bare personal information, preferences, and own knowledge. Therefore, we decided to work with an online survey. As we live and work in Germany, we know well the German academic landscape and thus restricted ourselves to professors working at a German university. We have focused on university professors as sample population (and skipped other academic staff in universities and also professors at universities of applied sciences), because we wanted to concentrate on persons who have (1) an established career path (in contrast to other academic staff) and (2) are to a high extent oriented towards publishing their research results (in contrast to professors at universities of applied science, formerly called Fachhochschulen , i.e. polytechnics, who are primarily oriented towards practice).

The online questionnaire (see Appendix 1 ) in German language contained three different sections. In Sect.  1 , we asked for personal data (gender, age, academic discipline, and university). Section  2 is on the professors’ personal estimations of the importance of publications, citations, their visibility on WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar, the h-index on the three platforms, the importance of the h-index in their academic discipline, and, finally, their preferences concerning h-index or m-index. We chose those three information services as they are the most prominent general scientific bibliographic information services (Linde and Stock 2011 , p. 237) and all three present their specific h-index in a clearly visible way. Section  3 includes the knowledge test on the h-index and a question concerning the m-index.

In this article, we report on all aspects in relation with the h-index (for other aspects, see Kamrani et al. 2020 ). For the estimations, we used a 5-point Likert scale (from 1: very important via 3: neutral to 5: very unimportant) (Likert 1932 ). It was possible for all estimations to click also on “prefer not to say.” The test in Sect.  3 was composed of two questions, namely a subjective estimation of the own knowledge on the h-index and an objective knowledge test on this knowledge with a multiple-choice test (items: one correct answer, four incorrect ones as distractors, and the option “I’m not sure”). Those were the five items (the third one being counted as correct):

h is the quotient of the number of citations of journal articles in a reference period and the number of published journal articles in the same period;

h is the quotient of the general number of citations of articles (in a period of three years) and the number of citations of a researcher’s articles (in the same three years);

h is the number of articles by a researcher, which were cited h times at minimum;

h is the number of all citations concerning the h-index, thereof subtracted h 2 ;

h is the quotient of the number of citations of a research publication and the age of this publication.

A selected-response format for the objective knowledge test was chosen since it is recommended as the best choice for measuring knowledge (Haladyna and Rodriguez 2013 ). For the development of the knowledge test items we predominantly followed the 22 recommendations given by Haladyna and Rodriguez ( 2013 , in section II). Using a three-option multiple-choice should be superior to the four- or five-option for several reasons. However, we decided to use five options because our test only contained one question. The “I’m not sure” selection was added for the reason that our test is not a typical (classroom) assessment test. We, therefore, did not want to force an answer, for example through guessing, but rather wanted to know if participants do not know the correct answer. Creating reliable distractors can be seen as the most difficult part of the test development. Furthermore, validation is a crucial task. Here we tested and validated the question to the best of our knowledge.

As no ethical review board was involved in our research, we had to determine the ethical harmlessness of the research project ourselves and followed suggestions for ethical research applying online surveys such as consent, risk, privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, and autonomy (Buchanan and Hvizdak 2009 ). We found the e-mail addresses of the participants in a publicly accessible source (a handbook on all German faculty members, Deutscher Hochschulverband 2020 ); the participation was basically voluntary, and the participants knew that their answers became stored. At no time, participants became individually identifiable through our data collection or preparation as we strictly anonymized all questionnaires.

Participants

The addresses of the university professors were randomly extracted from the German Hochschullehrer-Verzeichnis (Deutscher Hochschulverband 2020 ). So, our procedure was non-probability sampling, more precisely convenience sampling in combination with volunteer sampling (Vehovar et al. 2016 ). Starting with volume 1 of the 2020 edition of the handbook, we randomly picked up entries and wrote the e-mails addresses down. The link to the questionnaire was distributed to every single professor by the found e-mail addresses; to host the survey we applied UmfrageOnline . To strengthen the power of the statistical analysis we predefined a minimum of 1000 usable questionnaires. The power tables provided by Cohen ( 1988 ) have a maximum of n  = 1000 participants. Therefore, we chose this value of the sample size to ensure statistically significant results, also for smaller subsets as single genders, generations, and disciplines (Cohen 1992 ). We started the mailing in June 2019 and stopped it in March 2020, when we had response of more than 1000 valid questionnaires. All in all we contacted 5722 professors by mail and arrived at 1081 completed questionnaires, which corresponds to a response rate of 18.9%.

Table 1 shows a comparison between our sample of German professors at universities with the population as one can find it in the official statistics (Destatis 2019 ). There are only minor differences concerning the gender distribution and also few divergences concerning most disciplines; however, Table 1 exhibits two huge differences. In our sample, we find more (natural) scientists than in the official statistics and less scholars in the humanities and the social sciences.

In our analysis, we distinguished always between the results for all participants, and, additionally, the results by gender (Geraci et al. 2015 ), generation (Fietkiewicz et al. 2016 ), and the field of knowledge (Hirsch and Buela-Casal 2014 ). We differentiated two genders (men, women) (note the questionnaire also provided the options “diverse” and “prefer not to say,” which were excluded from further calculations concerning gender), four generations: Generation Y (born after 1980), Generation X (born between 1960 and 1980), Baby Boomers (born after 1946 and before 1960), Silent Generation (born before 1946), and six academic disciplines: (1) geosciences, environmental sciences, agriculture, forestry, (2) humanities, social sciences, (3) sciences (including mathematics), (4) medicine, (5) law, and (6) economics. This division of knowledge fields is in line with the faculty structure of many German universities. As some participants answered some questions with “prefer not to say” (which was excluded from further calculations), the sum of all answers is not always 1081.

As our Likert scale is an ordinal scale, we calculated in each case the median as well as the interquartile range (IQR). For the analysis of significant differences we applied the Mann–Whitney u-test (Mann and Whitney 1947 ) (for the two values of gender) and the Kruskall–Wallis h-test (Kruskal and Wallis 1952 ) (for more than two values as the generations and academic disciplines). The data on the researchers’ knowledge on the h-index are on a nominal scale, so we calculated relative frequencies for three values (1: researcher knows the h-index in her/his self-estimation and passed the test; 2: researcher does not know the h-index in her/his self-estimation; 3: researcher knows the h-index in her/his self-estimation and failed the test) and used chi-squared test (Pearson 1900 ) for the analysis of differences between gender, knowledge area, and generation. We distinguish between three levels of statistical significance, namely *: p  ≤ 0.05 (significant), **: p  ≤ 0.01 (very significant), and ***: p  ≤ 0.001 (extremely significant); however, one has to interpret such values always with caution (Amrhein et al. 2019 ). All calculations were done with the help of SPSS (see a sketch of the data analysis plan in Appendix 2 ).

Researchers’ estimations of the h-index

How do researchers estimate the importance of the h-index for their academic discipline? And how important is the h-index (on WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar) for themselves? In this paragraph, we will answer our research question 1.

Table 2 shows the different researcher estimations of the importance of the h-index concerning their discipline. While for all participants the h-index is “important” (2) for their academic field (median 2, IQA 1), there are massive and extremely significant differences between the single disciplines. For the sciences, medicine, and geosciences (including environmental sciences, agriculture, and forestry) the h-index is much more important (median 2, IQA 1) than for economics (median 3, IQA 1), humanities and social sciences (median 4, IQA 2), and law (median 5, IQA 0). The most votes for “very important” come from medicine (29.1%), the least from the humanities and social sciences (1.0%) as well as from law (0.0%). Conversely, the most very negative estimations (5: “very unimportant”) can be found among lawyers (78.6%) and scholars from the humanities and social sciences (30.4%). There is a clear cut between sciences (including geosciences, etc., and medicine) on one hand and humanities and all social sciences (including law and economics) on the other hand—with a stark importance of the h-index for the first-mentioned disciplines and a weak importance of the h-index for the latter.

In Tables 3 , 4 and 5 we find the results for the researchers’ estimations of the importance of their h-index on WoS (Table 3 ), Scopus (Table 4 ), and Google Scholar (Table 5 ). For all participants, the h-index on WoS is the most important one (median 2; however, with a wide dispersion of IQR 3), leaving Scopus and Google Scholar behind it (median 3, IQR 2 for both services). For all three bibliographic information services, the estimations of men and women do not differ in the statistical picture. For scientists (including geoscientists, etc.), a high h-index on WoS and Scopus is important (median 2); interestingly, economists join scientists when it comes to the importance of the h-index on Google Scholar (all three disciplines having a median of 2). For scholars from humanities and social sciences, the h-indices on all three services are unimportant (median 4), for lawyers they are even very unimportant (median 5). For researchers in the area of medicine there is a decisive ranking: most important is their h-index on WoS (median 2, IQR 2, and 41.5% votes for “very important”), followed by Scopus (median 2, IQA 1, but only 18.4% votes for “very important”), and, finally, Google Scholar (median 3, IQR 1, and the modus also equals 3, “neutral”). For economists, the highest share of (1)-votes (“very important”) is found for Google Scholar (29.9%) in contrast to the fee-based services WoS (19.7%) and Scopus (12.2%).

Similar to the results of the knowledge areas, there is also a clear result concerning the generations. The older a researcher, the less important is his or her h-index for him- or herself. We see a declining number of (1)-votes in all three information services, and a median moving over the generations from 2 to 3 (WoS), 2 to 4 (Scopus), and 2 to 3 (Google Scholar). The youngest generation has a preference for the h-index on Google Scholar ((1)-votes: 34.9%) over the h-indices on WoS ((1)-votes: 25.9%) and Scopus ((1)-votes: 19.8%).

A very interesting result of our study are the impressive differences of the importance estimations of the h-index by discipline (Fig.  1 ). With three tiny exceptions, the estimations for the general importance and the importance of the h-indices on WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar are consistent inside each scientific disciplines. For the natural sciences, geosciences etc., and medicine, the h-index is important (median 2), for economics, it is neutral (median 3), for the humanities and social sciences it is unimportant (median 4), and, finally, for law this index is even very unimportant (median 5).

Researchers’ estimations of the h-index by discipline (medians). N  = 1001 (general importance), N  = 961 (WoS), N  = 946 (Scopus), N  = 966 (Google Scholar); Scale: (1) very important, (2) important, (3) neutral, (4) unimportant, (5) very unimportant

We do not want to withhold a by-result on the estimation on a modification of the h-index by the time-adjusted m-index. 567 participants made a decision: for 50.8% of them the h-index is the better one, 49.2% prefer the m-index. More women (61.1%) than men (47.3%) choose the m-index over the original h-index. All academic disciplines except one prefer the m-index; scientists are the exception (only 42.8% approval for the m-index). For members of Generation Y, Baby Boomers, and Silent Generation the m-index is the preferable index; Generation X prefers mainly (54.3%) the h-index. Inside the youngest generation, Generation Y (being discriminated by the h-index), the majority of researchers (65.5%) likes the m-index more than the h-index.

Researchers’ state of knowledge on the h-index

Answering our research question 2, the overall result is presented in Fig.  2 . This is a combination of three questions, as we initially asked the researchers regarding their personal estimations of their general familiarity (Appendix 1 , Q10) and calculation knowledge (Q13) on the h-index. Only participants who confirmed that they have knowledge on the indicators’ calculation (Q10 and Q13) made the knowledge test (Q14). About three fifths of the professors know the h-index in their self-estimations and passed the test, one third of all answering participants does not know the h-index following their self-estimations, and, finally, 7.2% wrongly estimated their knowledge on the h-index, as they failed the test but meant to know it.

Researchers’ state of knowledge on the h-index: The basic distribution. N  = 1017

In contrast to many of our results concerning the researchers’ estimation of the importance of the h-index we see differences in the knowledge on the h-index by gender (Table 6 ). Only 41.6% of the women have justified knowledge (men: 64.6%), 50.0% do not know the definition or the formula of the h-index (men: 28.7%), and 8.3% wrongly estimate their knowledge as sufficient (men: 6.9%). However, these differences are statistically not significant.

In the sciences (incl. geosciences, etc.) and in medicine, more than 70% of the participants do know how to calculate the h-index. Scientists have the highest level of knowledge on the h-index (79.1% passed the knowledge test). Participants from the humanities and social sciences (21.1%) as well as from law (7.1%) exhibit the lowest states of knowledge concerning the h-index. With a share of 48.3%, economists take a middle position between the two main groups of researchers; however, there are 13.8% of economists who wrongly overestimate their knowledge state.

We found a clear result concerning the generations: the older the researcher the less is the knowledge on the h-index. While 62.9% of the Generation X know the calculation of the h-index, only 53.2% of the Baby Boomers possess this knowledge. The differences in the states of the researchers’ knowledge on the h-index within the knowledge areas and generations are extremely significant each.

Main results

Our main results are on the researchers’ estimations of the h-index and their state of knowledge on this scientometric indicator. We found a clear binary division between the academic knowledge fields: For the sciences (including geosciences, agriculture, etc.) and medicine the h-index is important for the researchers themselves and for their disciplines, while for the humanities and social sciences, economics, and law the h-index is considerably less important. For the respondents from the sciences and medicine, the h-index on WoS is most important, followed by the h-index of Google Scholar and Scopus. Surprisingly, for economists Google Scholar’s h-index is very attractive. We did not find significant differences between the estimations of the importance of the h-index between men and women; however, there are differences concerning the generations: the older the participants the less important they estimate the importance of the h-index.

Probably, for older professors the h-index has not the same significance as for their younger colleagues, as they are not so much in need to plan their further career or to apply for new research projects. On average, for researchers aged 60 and more, their productivity declines in contrast to younger colleagues (Kyvik 1990 ). And perhaps some of them simply do not know the existence of more recent services and of new scientometric indicators. Younger researchers are more tolerant of novelty in their work (Packalen and Bhattachrya 2015 ), and such novelty includes new information services (as Scopus and Google Scholar) as well as new indicators (as the h-index). It is known that young researchers rely heavily on search engines like Google (Rowlands et al. 2008 ), which partly may explain the high values for Google Scholar especially from Generation Y. Furthermore, the increasing publication pressure and the h-index utilization for decisions about early career researchers’ work-related paths thus also impact the importance of the indicator for those young professors (Farlin and Majewski 2013 ).

All in all, two fifths of the professors do not know the concrete calculation of the h-index or—which is rather scary—wrongly deem to know what the h-index is and failed our simple knowledge test. The women do even worse, as only about two fifths really know what the h-index is and how it is defined and calculated, but we should have in mind that this gender difference is statistically not significant. The older the researcher, the higher is the share of participants who do not know the definition and calculation of the h-index. The researchers’ knowledge on the h-index is much smaller in the academic disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences.

The h-index in the academic areas

Especially the obvious differences between the academic areas demand further explanation. Participants from the natural sciences and from medicine estimate the importance of the h-index as “important” or even “very important,” and they know details on this indicator to a high extend. The participants from the humanities, the social sciences, economics, and law are quite different. They estimate the h-index’ importance as “neutral,” “unimportant,” or even as “very unimportant,” and the share of researchers with profound knowledge on the h-index is quite low. Haddow and Hammarfelt ( 2019 ) also report a lower use of the h-index within these fields. Similar to our study, especially researchers in the field of law ( n  = 24) did not make use of the h-index. All researchers publish and all cite, too. There are differences in their publication channels, as scientists publish mostly in journals and researchers from the humanities publish in monographs and sometimes also in journals (Kulczycki et al. 2018 ), but this may not explain the differences concerning the importance of and the knowledge state on the h-index. Furthermore, more information on how such researchers’ h-index perceptions through different disciplines comply with the h-index (mis)usage for research evaluation within those disciplines would add another dimension to this topic.

The indeed very large general information services WoS and Scopus are, compared to personal literature lists of researchers, quite incomplete (Hilbert et al. 2015 ). There is also a pronounced unequal coverage of certain disciplines (Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016 ) and many languages (except English) (Vera-Baceta et al. 2019 ). Perhaps these facts, in particular, prevent representatives of the disadvantaged disciplines and languages (including German—and we asked German professors) from a high estimation of the relevance of their h-index as important on these platforms. Then, however, the rejection of the h-index of Google Scholar, which can also be seen, is surprising, because this information service is by far the most complete (Martin-Martin et al. 2018 ). However, economists are very well informed here, as they—as the only academic representatives—highly value their h-index at Google Scholar. On the other hand, the use of Google Scholar for research evaluation is discussed in general. Although its coverage is usually broader than those provided by more controlled databases and steadily expanding its collection, there exist widely known issues, for example, its low accuracy (Halevi et al. 2017 ). Depending on a researcher’s own opinion on this topic, this could be a reason for seeing no importance in the h-index provided by Google Scholar as well.

Another attempt for an explanation may be the different cultures in the different research areas. For Kagan ( 2009 , p. 4), natural scientists see their main interest in explanation and prediction, while for humanists it is understanding (following Snow 1959 and Dilthey 1895 , p. 10). The h-index is called an indicator allowing explanation and prediction of scientific achievement (Hirsch 2007 ); it is typical for the culture of natural sciences. Researchers from the natural science and from medicine are accustomed to numbers, while humanists seldom work quantitatively. In the humanities, other indicators such as book reviews and the quality of book publishers are components for their research evaluation; however, such aspects are not reflected by the h-index. And if humanities scholars are never asked for their h-index, why should they know or use it?

Following Kagan ( 2009 , p. 5) a second time, humanists exhibit only minimal dependence on outside support and natural scientists are highly dependent on external sources of financing. The h-index can work as an argument for the allocation of outside support. So for natural scientists the h-index is a very common fabric and they need it for their academic survival; humanists are not as familiar with numerical indicators and for them the h-index is not so much-needed as for their colleagues from the science and medicine faculties. However, this dichotomous classification of research and researchers may be an oversimplifying solution (Kowalski and Mrdjenovich 2016 ) and there is a trend in consulting and using such research evaluation indicators in the humanities and social sciences, too. For preparing a satisfying theory of researchers’ behavior concerning the h-index (or, in general, concerning scientometric indicators)—also in dependence on their background in an academic field—more research is needed.

Limitations, outlook, and recommendations

A clear limitation of the study is our studied population, namely university professors from Germany. Of course, researchers in other countries should be included in further studies. It seems necessary to broaden the view towards all researchers and all occupational areas, too, including, for instance, also lecturers in polytechnics and researchers in private companies. Another limitation is the consideration of only three h-indices (of WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar). As there are other databases for the calculation of an h-index (e.g., ResearchGate) the study should be broadened to all variants of the h-index.

Another interesting research question may be: Are there any correlations between the estimations of the importance of the h-index or the researcher’s knowledge on the h-index and the researcher’s own h-index? Does a researcher with a high h-index on, for instance, WoS, estimate the importance of this indicator higher than a researcher with a low h-index? Hirsch ( 2020 ) speculates that people with high h-indexes are more likely to think that this indicator is important. A more in-depth analysis on the self-estimation of researchers’ h-index knowledge might also consider the Dunning-Kruger effect, showing certain people can be wrongly confident about their limited knowledge within a domain and not having the ability to realize this (Kruger and Dunning 1999 ).

As the h-index has still an important impact on the evaluation of scientists and as not all researchers are very knowledgeable about this author-specific research indicator, it seems to be a good idea to strengthen their knowledge in the broader area of “metric-wiseness” (Rousseau et al. 2018 ; Rousseau and Rousseau 2015 ). With a stronger focus on educating researchers and research support staff in terms of the application and interpretation of metrics as well as to reduce misuse of indicators, Haustein ( 2018 ) speaks about better (scholarly) “metrics literacies.” Following Hammarfelt and Haddow ( 2018 ), we should further discuss possible effects of indicators within the “metrics culture.” Likewise, this also applies to all knowledgeable researchers as well as research evaluators who also may or may not be researchers by themselves. Here, the focus rather lies to raise awareness for metrics literacies and to foster fair research evaluation practices not incorporating any kind of misuse. This leads directly to a research gap in scientometrics. Further research on concrete data about the level of researchers’ knowledge not only concerning the h-index, but also on other indicators such as WoS’s impact factor, Google’s i-10 index, Scopus’ CiteScore, the source normalized impact per paper (SNIP), etc., also in a comparative perspective would draw a more comprehensive picture on the current indicator knowledge. All the meanwhile “classical” scientometric indicators are based upon publication and citation measures (Stock 2001 ). Alternative indicators are available today, which are based upon social media metrics, called “altmetrics” (Meschede and Siebenlist 2018 ; Thelwall et al. 2013 ). How do researchers estimate the importance of these alternative indicators and do they know their definitions and their formulae of calculation? First insights on this give Lemke et al. ( 2019 ), also in regard to researchers’ personal preferences and concerns.

Following Hirsch ( 2020 ), the h-index is by no means a valid indicator of research quality; however, it is very common especially in the sciences and medicine. Probably, it is a convenient indicator for some researchers who want to avoid the hassle of laborious and time-consuming reviewing and scrutinizing other researchers’ œuvre. Apart from its convenience and popularity, and seen from an ethical perspective, one should consider what significance a single metric should have and how we—in general—want to further shape the future of research evaluation.

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Kamrani, P., Dorsch, I. & Stock, W.G. Do researchers know what the h-index is? And how do they estimate its importance?. Scientometrics 126 , 5489–5508 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03968-1

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What is the H-index, and Does it Matter?

How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? One way is the h-index. Discover what this is, and learn about the pros and cons of using it to assess your scientific career.

Published October 20, 2023

Nick has a PhD from the University Dundee and is the Founder and Director of Bitesize Bio , Science Squared Ltd and The Life Science Marketing Society .

The h-index is a measure of research performance and is calculated as the highest number of manuscripts from an author (h) that all have at least the same number (h) of citations. The h-index is known to penalize early career researchers and does not take into account the number of authors on a paper. Alternative indexes have been created, including the i-10, h-frac, G-index, and M-number.

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How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? How would you compare the impact of two scientists in a field? What if you had to decide which one would get a grant? One method is the h-index, which we will discuss in more detail below. First, we’ll touch on why this is not a simple task.

Measuring scientific performance is more complicated and more critical than it might first seem. Various methods for measurement and comparison have been proposed, but none of them is perfect.

At first, you might think that the method for measuring scientific performance doesn’t concern you—because all you care about is doing the best research you can. However, you should care because these metrics are increasingly used by funding bodies and employers to allocate grants and jobs. So, your perceived scientific performance score could seriously affect your career.

Metrics for Measuring Scientific Performance

What are the metrics involved in measuring scientific performance? The methods that might first spring to mind are:

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• Recommendations from peers. At first glance, this is a good idea in principle. However, it is subject to human nature, so personal relationships will inevitably affect perceived performance. Also, if a lesser-known scientist publishes a ground-breaking paper, they would likely get less recognition than if a more eminent colleague published the same paper.
• The number of articles published. A long publication list looks good on your CV, but the number of articles published does not indicate their impact on the field. Having a few publications well-heeded by colleagues in the field (i.e., they are cited often) is better than having a long list of publications cited poorly or not at all.
• The average number of citations per article published. So, if it’s citations we’re interested in, then surely the average number of citations per paper is a better number to look at. Well, not really. The average could be skewed dramatically by one highly cited article, so it does not allow a good comparison of overall performance.

The H-Index

In 2005, Jorge E. Hirsch of UCSD published a paper in PNAS in which he put forward the h-index as a metric for measuring and comparing the overall scientific productivity of individual scientists. [1]

The h-index has been quickly adopted as the metric of choice for many committees and bodies.

How to Calculate An Author’s H-Index

The h-index calculation is pretty simple. You plot the number of papers versus the number of citations you (or someone else) have received, and the h-index is the number of papers at which the 45-degree line (citations=papers, orange) intercepts the curve, as shown in Figure 1 . That is, h equals the number of papers that have received at least h citations. For example, do you have one publication that has been cited at least once? If the answer is yes, then you can go on to your next publication. Have your two publications each been cited at least twice? If yes, then your h-index is at least 2. You can keep going until you get to a “no.”

So, if you have an h-index of 20, you have 20 papers with at least 20 citations. It also means that you are doing pretty well with your science!

What is a Good H-Index?

Hirsch reckons that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional.

In his paper, Hirsch shows that successful scientists do, indeed, have high h-indices: 84% of Nobel Prize winners in physics, for example, had an h-index of at least 30. Table 1 lists some eminent scientists and their respective h-indexes.

Table 1: H-index scores of some Nobel Laureates (data from Google Scholar collected on September 27, 2023).

Advantages of the H-Index

The advantage of the h-index is that it combines productivity (i.e., number of papers produced) and impact (number of citations) in a single number. So, both productivity and impact are required for a high h-index; neither a few highly cited papers nor a long list of papers with only a handful of (or no!) citations will yield a high h-index.

Limitations of the H-Index

Although having a single number that measures scientific performance is attractive, the h-index is only a rough indicator of scientific performance and should only be considered as such.

Limitations of the h-index include the following:

• It does not take into account the number of authors on a paper. A scientist who is the sole author of a paper with 100 citations should get more credit than one on a similarly cited paper with 10 co-authors.
• It penalizes early-career scientists. Outstanding scientists with only a few publications cannot have a high h-index, even if all of those publications are ground-breaking and highly cited. For example, Albert Einstein would have had an h-index of only 4 or 5 if he had died in early 1906 despite being widely known as an influential physicist at the time.
• Review articles have a greater impact on the h-index than original papers since they are generally cited more often.
• The use of the h-index has now broadened beyond science. However, it’s difficult to compare fields and scientific disciplines directly, so, really, a ‘good’ h-index is impossible to define.

Calculating the H-Index

There are several online resources and h-index calculators for obtaining a scientist’s h-index. The most established are ISI Web of Knowledge, and Scopus, both of which require a subscription (probably via your institution), but there are free options too, one of which is Publish or Perish .

You might get a different value if you check your own (or someone else’s) h-index with each of these resources. Each uses a different database to count the total publications and citations. ISI and Scopus use their own databases, and Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar. Each database has different coverage and will provide varying h-index values. For example, ISI has good coverage of journal publications but poor coverage of conferences, while Scopus covers conferences better but needs better journal coverage pre-1992. [2]

Is the H-index Still Effective?

A paper published in PLoS One in 2021 concluded that while a scientist’s h-index previously correlated well with the number of scientific awards, this is no longer the case. This lack of correlation is partly because of the change in authorship patterns, with the average number of authors per paper increasing. [3]

Are Alternatives to the H-Index Better?

Let’s take a look at some of the alternative measures available.

The H-Frac Index

The authors of the PLoS One paper suggest fractional analogs of the h-index are better suited for the job. [3] Here, the number of authors on a paper is also considered. One such measure is the h-frac, where citation counts are divided by the number of authors. However, this solution could also be manipulated to the detriment of more junior researchers, as minimizing the number of authors on a paper would maximize your h-frac score. This could mean more junior researchers are left off papers where they did contribute, harming their careers. 

The G-Index

This measure looks at the most highly cited articles of an author and is defined as “the largest number n of highly cited articles for which the average number of citations is at least n .” [4] This measure allows highly cited papers to bolster lower cited papers of an author. 

The i-10 Index

Developed by Google Scholar, this index is the number of articles published by an author that have received at least 10 citations. This measure, along with the h-index, is available on Google Scholar.

The m-value was developed to try to balance the scales for early career researchers. It corrects the h-index for time, allowing for easier comparison of researchers with different seniority and career lengths. It is calculated as the h-index divided by the number of years.

The Problem with Measuring Performance

While these numbers can be helpful to give a flavor of a scientist’s performance, they are all flawed. Many are biased towards researchers who publish often and are further into their careers. Many of these indexes can also be manipulated, such as adding extra authors to papers who didn’t contribute.

In reality, it isn’t possible to distill a researcher’s contributions to a single number. They may not have published many papers, but those papers they have published made vital contributions. Or their skills are in training the next round of researchers. When looking at these numbers, we should remember they are just a reflection of one small part of a researcher’s contributions and values and are not the be-all and end-all.

The H-Index Summed Up

The h-index provides a useful metric for scientific performance, but only when viewed in the context of other factors. While other measures are available, including the i-10 index, the G-index, and the h-frac index, these also have limitations. Therefore, when making decisions that are important to you (funding, job, finding a PI), be sure to read through publication lists, talk to other scientists (and students) and peers, and take account of career stage. So, remember that an h-index is only one consideration among many—and you should definitely know your h-index—but it doesn’t define you (or anyone else) as a scientist.

• Hirsch JE. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output . PNAS 102(46):16569–72
• Meho LI, Yang K. (2007) Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar . JASIST 58(13):2105–25
• Koltun V, Hafner D. (2021) The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation . PLoS One . 16(6):e0253397
• Wikipedia. g-index . Accessed 25 September 2023

Originally published April 2, 2009. Reviewed and updated October 2023.

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Quantifying the Impact of My Publications: What is the h index?

• Levels of Impact
• Article Metrics
• Book Metrics

What is the h index?

• Establishing Your Author Name and Presence
• Enhancing Your Impact
• Tracking Your Work
• Telling Your Story

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 . [i]   The h index is a quantitative metric based on analysis of publication data using publications and citations to provide “an estimate of the importance, significance, and broad impact of a scientist’s cumulative research contributions .” [ii]    According to Hirsch, the h index is defined as: “ A scientist has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each and the other (Np – h) papers have ≤h citations each .”

As an example, an h index of 10 means that among all publications by one author, 10 of these publications have received at least 10 citations each.  

Hirsch argues that the h index is preferable to other single-number criteria, such as the total number of papers, the total number of citations and citations per paper. However, Hirsch includes several caveats:

• A single number can never give more than a rough approximation to an individual’s multifaceted profile;
• Other factors should be considered in combination in evaluating an individual;
• There will be differences in typical h values in different fields, determined in part by the average number of references in a paper in the field, the average number of papers produced by each scientist in the field, and the size (number of scientists) of the field; and
• For an author with a relatively low h that has a few seminal papers with extraordinarily high citation counts, the h index will not fully reflect that scientist’s accomplishments. [iii]

Since Hirsch introduced the h index in 2005, this measure of academic impact has garnered widespread interest as well as proposals for other indices based on analyses of publication data such as the g index, h (2) index, m quotient, r index, to name a few.

Several commonly used databases, such as Elsevier’s Scopus , Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science , and Google Scholar   provide h index values for authors.

[i] Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 November 15; 102(46): 16569–16572. doi:  10.1073/pnas.0507655102

[ii] Ibid. p. 16569.

[iii] Ibid. p. 16571

Resources to Find the h index

• Google Scholar Google Scholar provides the h index for authors who have created a profile.
• Publish or Perish Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations from Google Scholar and provides the h index among other metrics. Publish or Perish is handy for obtaining the h index for authors who do not have a Google Scholar profile.
• Scopus Scopus provides a Citation Tracker feature that allows for generation of a Citation Overview chart to generate a h index for publications and citations from 1970 to current. The feature also allows for removal of self-citations from the overall citation counts.
• Web of Science Core Collection Web of Science allows for generation of the h index for publications and citations from 1970 to current using the "Create Citation Report" feature.

Understanding the h index

Do You Need an h index Report?

Do you need an h index report.

We provide h index reports (Scopus and/or Web of Science) to members of the Washington University in St. Louis community.

Contact Amy Suiter to request a report.

Strengths and Shortcomings

Strengths of the h index

• The h index is a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author’s scholarly output and performance; measures quantity with quality by comparing publications to citations.
• The h index corrects for the disproportionate weight of highly cited publications or publications that have not yet been cited.
• Several resources automatically calculate the h index as part of citation reports for authors.

Shortcomings of the h index

• The h index is a metric to assess the entire body of scholarly output by an author; not intended for a specific timeframe.
• The h index is insensitive to publications that are rarely cited such as meeting abstracts and to publications that are frequently cited such as reviews.
• Author name variant issues and multiple versions of the same work pose challenges in establishing accurate citation data for a specific author.
• The h index does not provide the context of the citations.
• The h index is not considered a universal metric as it is difficult to compare authors of different seniority or disciplines. Young investigators are at a disadvantage and academic disciplines vary in the average number of publications, references and citations.
• Self-citations or gratuitous citations among colleagues can skew the h index.
• The h index will vary among resources depending on the publication data that is included in the calculation of the index.
• The h index disregards author ranking and co-author characteristics on publications.
• There are instances of “paradoxical situations” for authors who have the same number of publications, with varying citation counts, but have the same h index. As an example, Author A has eight publications which have been cited a total of 338 times and Author B also has eight publications which have been cited a total of 28 times. Author A and Author B have the same h index of 5 but Author A has a higher citation rate than Author B. See Balaban, AT. 2012. Positive and negative aspects of citation indices and journal impact factors. Scientometrics. DOI: 10.1007/s11192-102-0637-5

Is There an Alternative to the h index?: The m value

The m value is a correction of the h index for time (m = h/y). According to Hirsch,  m is an “ indicator of the successfulness of a scientist ” and can be used to compare scientists of different seniority. The m value can be seen as an indicator for “scientific quality” with the advantage (as compared to the h index) that the m value is corrected for career length.

What are the Ranges?

Per Hirsch:

• h index of 20 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes a successful scientist
• h index of 40 after 20 years of scientific activity, characterizes outstanding scientists, likely to be found only at the top universities or major research laboratories.
• h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals.
• h index of 15-20, fellowship in the National Physical Society.
• h index of 45 or higher, membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Other works that discuss the h index in comparison to various medical specialties are noted here .

• << Previous: Book Metrics
• Next: Establishing Your Author Name and Presence >>
• Last Updated: Jun 24, 2024 7:38 AM
• URL: https://beckerguides.wustl.edu/impactofpublications

Calculate your h-index

What is the h-index, find your h-index, metrics, impact and engagement.

Use metrics  to provide evidence of:

• engagement with your research, and
• the impact of your research.

Reusing content from this guide

Attribute our work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The h-index is a measure of the number of publications published (productivity), as well as how often they are cited .

h-index = the number of publications with a citation number greater than or equal to h.

For example, 15 publications cited 15 times or more, is a h-index of 15.

Read more about the h-index, first proposed by J.E. Hirsch, as An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output .

• Do an author search for yourself in Scopus
• Click on your name to display your number of publications, citations and h-index.

Google Scholar

• Create a Google Scholar Citations Profile
• Make sure your publications are listed.

Web of Science

Create a citation report of your publications that will display your h-index in Web of Science .

Watch Using Web of Science to find your publications and track record metrics 

h-index tips

• Citation patterns vary across disciplines . For example, h-indexes in Medicine are much higher than in Mathematics
• h-indexes are dependent on the coverage and related citations in the database. Always provide the data source and date along with the h-index
• h-indexes do not account for different career stages
• Your h-index changes over time . Recalculate it each time you include it in an application

Provide additional information about your metrics when talking about your h-index.

Example statement

A statement about your h-index could follow this format:

"My h-index, based on papers indexed in Web of Science, is 10. It has been 5 years since I finished my PhD. I have 4 papers (A, B, C, D) with more than 20 citations and 1 paper (E) with 29 citations (Web of Science, 05/08/19). I also have an additional 3 papers not indexed by WoS, with 29 citations based on Scopus data (01/12/20)"

Other indices

• i10 index calculation includes the number of papers with at least 10 citations. Available from Google Scholar Citations Profile. Can also be calculated manually.
• g-index modification of the h-index to give more weight to highly cited papers
• m-Quotient accounts for career length, the h-index divided by the number of years since an author's first publication
• h-index and Variants overview of various indices, including a look at the advantages and disadvantages
• Last Updated: May 31, 2024 11:40 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/for-researchers/h-index

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to use Web of Science to calculate your h-index

Step 1: Go to the Web of Science search form

Step 2: screen the search results and create a citation report, step 3: assess the web of science h-index, troubleshooting: what to do when there are articles that were wrongly assigned, it's not just authors you can calculate an h-index for on web of science, frequently asked questions about using web of science to calculate your h-index, related articles.

Web of Science is a database with millions of articles and citations. This data can be used to calculate all sorts of bibliographic metrics including the h-index. Unfortunately, Web of Science is not free, but your institution might have a subscription to it. If so, you'll have access to it when you're on the campus network. When you're off campus, take a look at our off-campus access database to see if your institution is listed.

➡️ Learn more:  What is the h-index?

The h-index was designed for evaluating authors, but it can also be used as a guiding metric when researching a new area. Technically, any set of papers can be given a h-index and it is fairly easy to apply it to a set of search results and use the h-index as a guideline for gaining a broad introduction to the major discussions in the field. But first, let's explore the most efficient way to calculate the h-index of an author.

• Go to: https://webofknowledge.com/ .
• Change the drop-down option from Topic to Author . The default search space, the Core Collection, is usually the best option as it includes both journals and conference proceedings.
• Note that the conference proceedings only go back to 1990.
• Changing the search space to a more specific domain database only makes sense if you get too many false positives in your search results and picking the right ones becomes cumbersome.
• If you or the author you are researching has a ResearcherID or ORCID entry then go with this ID and change the drop-down option to Author identifier .

If you are sure that the author's name is the same on all publications, then provide as much information as you can because it will help to get only relevant entries. Let's take for example the well-known physicist Stephen W. Hawking . The problem is that he might go by Stephen Hawking, Stephen W Hawking, or just by SW Hawking. That's something that needs to be explored on an individual basis. In this tutorial, I tried "Hawking SW". Yes, the last name goes first !

The next step is to screen the search results to see if they really list the author we have been looking for. You can use various filters in the left-hand panel to trim down your results. "Web of Science Categories" and "Organizations-Enhanced" are the most useful ones. But don't worry if some false positives are left; we can remove them in the next step.

Once you have filtered the search results accordingly, all you need to do is click on "Create Citation Report".

By now, a new page will have been opened that displays all sorts of bibliographic metrics including the h-index.

At the bottom of the page, you will find a list of all publications that have been included in this analysis. If you need to remove some false positive hits, then simply select the checkbox of the entry and then hit the "Go" button. The h-index calculation will update immediately.

Yes, the h-index was originally defined as an author-centric measure, but it can also be used to explore research topics in general. For example, if researching the topic of "ageism" on Web of Science, the h-index can be determined easily by following the steps described before and creating a citation report. For the search term “Machine Learning” the regular way does not work as the search yields more than 10,000 results. You can still calculate a h-index, but it requires some manual work. First change the "Sorted by" dropdown menu to "Times Cited -- highest to lowest", and then scroll to the point at which the times cited is less than the rank.

➡️ Learn more:  How to calculate the h-index manually

➡️ Learn more: How to calculate the h-index using Scopus

➡️ Learn more: How to find your h-index in Google Scholar

An h-index is a rough summary measure of a researcher’s productivity and impact . Productivity is quantified by the number of papers, and impact by the number of citations the researchers' publications have received.

Google Scholar can automatically calculate your h-index, read our guide How to calculate your h-index on Google Scholar for further instructions.

Even though Scopus needs to crunch millions of citations to find the h-index, the look-up is pretty fast. Read our guide How to calculate your h-index using Scopus for further instructions.

The h-index is not something that needs to be calculated on a daily basis, but it's good to know where you are for several reasons. First, climbing the h-index ladder is something worth celebrating. But more importantly, the h-index is one of the measures funding agencies or the university's hiring committee calculate when you apply for a grant or a position. Given the often huge number of applications, the h-index is calculated in order to rank candidates and apply a pre-filter.

Unfortunately, Web of Science is not free, but your institution might have a subscription to it. If so, you'll have access to it when you're on the campus network. When you're off campus, take a look at our off campus access database to see if your institution is listed.

Search within the TIB website or find specialist literature and information in the TIB Portal.

The TIB Portal allows you to search the library's own holdings and other data sources simultaneously. By restricting the search to the TIB catalogue, you can search exclusively for printed and digital publications in the entire stock of the TIB library.

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Should a Ph.D. be done with a low h-indexed professor

I live in a 3rd world country and at one of top universities in my country a professor offered me a PhD position. I will pursue a part time PhD while working full time. I have to decide on whether or not to accept his offer.

My PhD chances in U.S. or other western countries where an established academic community exists is infinitesimal. This is due to my undergraduate degree is from another nationally lower ranked school than the nationally top ranked university I mentioned. Professors at my undergraduate school have no connection with western researchers and no cares about them, my undergradute professors also do not care about the international academic community.

Though the institution I was offered to pursue a PhD is nationally reputed and having a PhD degree from there carries a nationwise reputation, I believe that my postdoc chances from decent to good schools in western countries are very low. My professor has a title as Professor, but his h-index is extremely low (< 10), while his western colleagues usually have an index of greater than 30, and usually renowed ones have an index of gretaer than 50. Also his students do not seem to secure good postdocs.

I have started to dislike my professor too. I may work with him a few years and apply for a PhD after obtaining some publications, but still I will need his connections.

This might be my only chance for a PhD and I am not sure what to do. What are my chances in western academic system after this PhD ? Should a PhD done with a professor whose work does not receive much citations and who publishes rarely ?

• publications

• 1 Welcome to Academia.SE! However, this post addresses a few different questions at once. Please consider scoping question to address a single issue (for example, only about low h index OR only about professor in a third world country with not much collaboration with Western research). You can ask a few different questions, but please, do it in separate threads. That way, it will be possible to answer your questions in a meaningful way and answers will be usable also for others. –  Piotr Migdal Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 12:16
• What do you wish to do with your PHd once you get it? –  Ian Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 17:24
• I would advise you to speak to other PhD students who have done it part-time. It's difficult if you're doing it full-time, and I've personally tried it part-time and wasn't able to do it. Not saying it's not possible, and if it's your only option you need to do what you need to do. Just saying be prepared by talking to others who have done it. –  user12527 Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 0:16
• 2 I don't know if you can do this, but if your main goal is to end up in Western academia, you might consider doing a masters in a Western country. I did that and it made a world of a difference when it came to applying to PhD positions. –  Ana Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 8:34

6 Answers 6

Picking a PhD supervisor based on his h-index is like picking a car based on his horse-power; you ignore a huge number of factors that are probably equally important if not more. It is drivable (can you work with this person?), is it expensive to run (do the guy needs to pampered and treated like royalty?), are other owners happy with their purchase (are his other PhD students happy with his supervision?), etc. etc. Getting a really fast car only to crash it cause you can't drive it does mean much and getting a supervisor who after a year's time makes you want to quit your PhD doesn't mean much either. Most probably in both cases people are going to think less of you.

I think the most important thing is that you say that "I have started to dislike my professor too." that is a major problem and you should not pick a supervisor that you dislike. I do not mean that by being "homies" with supervisor; I mean about mutual respect and ability to work efficiently and with understanding about each other maybe "small quirks". (eg. My supervisor avoided setting up morning meeting with me because I am a night-person; it was fine, he even joked up about it at times "Next week I have X thing going on so we probably need to meet at 11.00. I know you'll just be out of bed but that is my only available time." That did not mean though I was not expected to be always punctuational for our meeting or having worked seriously on the projects at hand.

To recap: As you present things I would say "do not to work with this professor" but not because of his low h-index but because you say you do not like him and that his PhD students seem not to take good positions (low after-sales value :) ).

You mention that US institution are out of the equation effectively; "fine". Have you thought of PhD programmes in Europe? Some small, not too famous but reputable universities in EU can be stepping stones for a post-doc in US (Given you do excellent work at your PhD obviously).

• 17 picking a car based on his horse-power — or perhaps more accurately, on the number of times the car is mentioned on TV. –  JeffE Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 19:59
• Above comment is painfully correct. There are many excellent research opportunities with low h-index, and similarly, there are many "high h" positions that won't move you forward in the ways you hope. –  meawoppl Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 23:21

Having a low h-index doesn't mean that your professor is a poor scientist, in the same way that having a high h-index doesn't guarantee he/she is a good one. The primary reason is that the h-index is bounded from above by the total number of publications, so people who have entered the field recently have a lower h-index than those that have been working there for decades, simply because the former haven't had so much time to publish enough papers. Additionally, the h-index only cares about a minimum number of citations per publication, and it doesn't take into account the total number of citations per publication or the importance of those citations. For example, if I publish two papers in Science and then retire from academia, my h-index will never be higher than 2, even if those two papers are completely revolutionary and get cited a kazillion times by the biggest guns in the field. In contrast, if I publish 20 papers reporting trivial and mundane results in North Dakota Community College Engineering Bulletin that only get cited by a bunch of my colleagues in a seventh-rate journal, I can potentially get my h-index up to 20.

A better way of deciding if you want to work with this person is to spend an afternoon reading through some of his recent work, and then to ask yourself: Does this person's work look interesting enough that I want to spend the next several years talking to him every day? . Or If I was already a professor, would I advise my own students to go get a PhD under this guy? . Or, if in doubt, ask these questions to your current mentors, who probably will have a more informed opinion than you do.

I think the question of how good your advisor will be is of secondary importance here because the real question is will you do a PhD or not? PhD positions are not easy to come by (depending on the field of study.) This may be your only chance.

The role of advisor is of course important, especially when it comes to getting your post-doc positions. You need to ask whether you are confident enough in your own abilities to write notable papers that are going to compensate for the shortcomings of the advisor. Have you discussed with him the projects that he will want you to work on? The biggest danger is that he will want you to do something that you are not inspired by. If you like the projects he proposes and feel confident that you can do well even if your advisor's help is limited then you should go for it.

At least you will still be working part time so you have a backup. Why not give it a try and be prepared to drop out after one year if it does not look promising (but don't tell the prof that obviously).

One more thing, if you do go for it try to have a more positive attitude. No advisor is perfect but they are usually on your side.

I had a similar dilemma when I decided to pursue the PhD. The rank of the program is important but the intersection of your advisor's work and your interests is the critical factor. If your research is not related to that of your advisor, he will not be able to offer insights to guide you along. You can get in-depth guidance about literature searches, literature reviews, and selecting and arguing a thesis from many outstanding reference books. Furthermore, your advisor cannot cover the breadth and depth of these reference books in the few short meetings that will be allotted to you. What you need is concise, trenchant insight that is relevant to the research.

To address your last question:

Should a PhD done with a professor whose work does not receive much citations and who publishes rarely ?

There are many considerations as pointed out by other answers. H-index is one measure that might help you understand, at a glance, things about a scholar, but given the seriousness of your situation (wanting to do a PhD) you should dig deeper. For instance, does the professor have a low H-index because he is new to the field (as mentioned by Koldito)? Or is the H-index low because his area is highly specialized, and quite small? These might be reasons for relaxing how important this metric is in making your decision.

If, on the other hand, his H-index is low because he does not publish often (e.g. he does not value publishing as a scholarly work), or because he publishes in venues with low impact, these might be good reasons for concern. Similarly, you note that others in his field who would be experts from the west would have an H-index > 50; if this professor isn't an expert in the field then I would consider that cause for legitimate concern too.

You asked a second question:

This might be my only chance for a PhD and I am not sure what to do. What are my chances in western academic system after this PhD ?

Your insight that his previous students don't tend to get good postdocs is something to consider, especially if other students in the university are able to secure quality postdoc positions. My personal experience has been that if you want to secure a position in the western academic system you need to do something there first (a degree, a postdoc, etc.), so making sure your PhD puts you on the path to achieving this sounds like it is important for your goals. I would encourage you to ask the adviser directly who he collaborates with and how you can get experience through the PhD working with scholars worldwide. Be explicit about your goals. If he decides he doesn't want to work with you because of this, then he probably isn't the right supervisor for you.

And a final note of advice, your social networks and institutional affiliations are more important when you are looking for that first academic job than your h-index. H-index is used more regularly for judging things like tenure, promotion, etc. In the western system, from my experience, you want people to know at a glance that you have credentials that are rigorous and prestigious. If doing a PhD with this professor won't put you on this track then you should seriously consider your other options. But dig deeper than the H-index to investigate this.

I have been working as a graduate advisor for many years and I am giving you suggestions based on that experience. I hope I don't sound overly critical, just a couple of things I usually tell incoming PhD students about their expectations of graduate school. This may be because I work mostly with undergraduates transitioning directly into graduate school, so often I have to play the antagonist in these discussions to challenge my students to think about their own plans for their own future. And to be realistic. So here goes:

Most importantly, I think that you should also consider the amount of effort you are willing to put into the PhD. Typically, PhD students are asked to commit full time to it, and though this varies with the discipline, my experience working with PhD students is that the more time they spend developing themselves as academics and masters of their field, the better they do professionally.

I am concerned that you do not like your mentor/professor much. Are there others on your committee (or academics you are considering to be on your committee) that you do prefer? It's not unusual to not see eye-to-eye with your mentor - it is unusual that you don't want to continue working/ knowing him after your graduate - but rather his connections. Typically, his word to his connections is what begins your immersion in his network - so you will have to be careful to either keep that disdain in check or work will not be fun and challenging (as it should be) and will end up being a chore and make you more frustrated - and isolated.

Finally, about rising in the ranks of academia. Being a part of the Western academic society is not the ultimate social status. Being a highly valued academic in your chosen field of work is.

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