The h-index is based on the number and impact of a researcher’s publications. An h-index of 20 means that, out of all papers published by an author, 20 of them have been cited at least 20 times.
Three resources—ISI Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar—include the necessary citation data for h-index in their respective databases. The h-index of an author will be different in each of these databases, since they only calculate using their own journal content.
The h-index was proposed in 2005 by Jorge E. Hirsch to quantify the research achievement of physicists based on their publication record. In the diagram below a researcher with an index of h, out of all his publications, h publications have at least h citations each.
Citation Analysis for a Known Author
Using the Search function, type the name of a known author. For an author that published under different initials, make sure you include all the initials to retrieve all the published papers in the Web of Science. E.g. For the author Smith JA, search for smith j* OR smith a*.
On the results page, on the right hand side above the results, click on Create Citation Report to see the citation analysis for the author.
The Citation Report gives the numbers for published items in each year, citations in each year, total citations, average citations per item, and the h-index.
Also, remember that if you have books or papers in non-Web of Science indexed journals or in older indexed journals before they were included in the Web of Science, you need to add them manually to your h-index calculation.
Citation Analysis for a Known article or book
Using the Cited Reference Search function, enter as much information as you have. Click Search.
Web of Science does not index books but you can use Cited Reference Search to find citations for a particular book.
1. Click on Author Search.
2. Type your last name and your initial and click Search.
3. Select the names that match your name.
4. Click on Show Documents to see your publications and how they were cited in Scopus.
5. Click on Select All and then View Citation Overview.
6. You will see your H-Index.
Scopus only calculates citations received since 1996
To find citations for a particular work: search for the publication title.
To find citations for an author: Go to Advanced Search by clicking on the down arrow in the search box and enter details of the author.
To find the H-index: you can use two options to find your h-index:
Option 1. In the My Citations service, you can create a profile and tract your publications' citations in Google Scholar including the h-index.
Option 2. Publish or Perish
Publish or Perish is a free software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations using data from Google Scholar.
POP calculates:
