H-Index and Its Variants

Abstract

H-index is an accepted norm to rank scientists and makes them eligible for various professional benefits. However, taking into consideration the associated flaws of the h-index, a diversified set of parameters have been proposed by the scientific community to rank authors in a better way. Imaginary case studies and datasets are used to find out the practical and actual utility of the proposed indicators. To analyze the individual behaviour of each index, these indices are comprehensively evaluated on an extensive data set. This study emphasizes the scrutiny of the h-index, some of its variants, and extensions to rank authors. There appears to be a correlation between high citation rates for a published researcher and the award of prestigious accolades. Thus, the inclusion of a researcher in the list is based on high citation rates and the authority has claimed a direct connection between the citation rates and prestigious awards. In this context, the work initiated to find out the h-index and its variants for the selected researchers incorporated in the hall of citation laureates from the field of medicine. It is clear from the correlation analysis that there is a difference in the degree of correlation between the h-index and its variants. The A-index is weakly correlated, and M-Quotient is strongly correlated with h-index. Thus, most of the h-index variants are merely mathematically and arithmetically modified and does not add any new information as these are highly correlated and are based on the h-core. Thus, more useful and reasonable approaches could be developed for multidimensional and contextualized evaluations of scientific performance rather than cocooning them with mere numbers.

Scientific Performance and Mapping of the Term STEM in Education on the Web of Science

“…These themes are represented by the periods established above. This shows the topics with various bibliometric indicators, presenting in this case the h index [79], g index [80], hg index [81] and q 2 index [82], thus offering information on the most relevant topics in each of the intervals marked. According to the data revealed in Table 10, there has not been a theme that, due to its bibliometric indicators, is a reference year after year, except in the years 2017 and 2018, where "science" presents the highest bibliometric values.…”

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

“…After Hirsch's publication of the two initial formulas (i.e. the h-index and the timeadjusted 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).…”

Research Productivity among Plastic Surgeons in the State of Israel: h-index and M-quotient Assessment

“…Originally introduced by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005, the h-index is described as the number of an author's published articles, h, that have been cited at least h times. [2][3][4][5] By doing so, the h-index corrects for the disproportionate weight of highly cited publications or publications that have not yet been cited.…”