Strengths and Limitations of the h-Index

How do we measure the impact that we have researchers? One of the most popular metrics used that accounts for paper production and citation count is the h-Index.

What exactly is the h-Index?

The h-Index is a single number that is supposed to represent both the quantity and the quality of a researcher’s work.

This number increases when the citation count per paper authored is high. If a researcher has published a large number of papers with no citations on those papers, then their h-Index will not increase significantly, and similarly if a researcher has only one paper to their name, but it has a high citation count, then their h-Index will also not increase.

The goal of the h-Index was to encourage quality science as well as productivity.

In publish or perish culture…

Since being established in 2005, the h-Index has become a benchmark for success in the academic world: an h-Index of 20 is considered pretty standard for an average researcher who has been working for 20 years, while and h-Index of 40 is considered outstanding and 60 is exceptional.

Research committees and funding bodies will often use the h-Index of applicants as a quick indicator to assess credibility and easily compare candidates. This use of the h-Index means that it can influence the likelihood of a researcher securing funding or progressing in their academic career.

It’s not a perfect system…

The opposing side to building an h-Index over the length of an academic career, is that early career researchers are naturally put at a disadvantage. As h-Index only ever increases over time, this career length bias fails to appropriately represent young researchers who are producing great science early on in their careers.

There is a disparity between fields when it comes to citation culture. Biological STEM fields have a high rates of citation, so researchers within these field will naturally have a higher h-Index than those working in other STEM fields in which citation is less commonplace, such as mathematics and it is therefore unfair to compare the scores of researchers from different disciplines.

The h-Index system only accounts for citations that are for an individual’s contributions in research articles. There is no system that allows for contributions to books, datasets, policy documents or new technologies/software.

If a researcher excessively cites their previous work in their own articles, they can artificially boost their own h-Index, thus effectively cheat the system. This can also occur between groups who constantly cite each other to maintain relevance in a field.

Want to ethically increase your h-Index?

It is not necessary to commit nefarious acts of disingenuous signal boosting to improve your h-index and increase the visibility of your research.

Publishing in high-impact journals will increase your visibility, rather than publishing in smaller journals. However, as we discuss in Paperstars culture: just because a paper is published in a high-impact journal does not mean it is of good quality!

Open access journals allow for more eyes to fall on your work as it is the most accessible way to publish for the end reader, however this can be pricey for the author (depending on the journal) and may not be in line with certain research contracts.

Collaboration is a great way of benefiting from a network of researcher with more experience and higher h-indexes than your own. While this presents an opportunity to increase the scope of your research, it may also lead to compromises being made in terms of the direction of research.

In the world of connectivity and networking, sharing your research in person at conferences and online on social media platforms is another way to increase the number of people who will view your work and therefore increase the likelihood of being cited.

Where we see researcher metrics going…

Although the h-Index is a powerful tool, it cannot fully encapsulate a researcher’s value and lacks context. It is important to use other metrics alongside the h-Index to allow for nuance and flexibility, as well as looking to qualitative reviews of the research itself.

Paperstars hopes to provide a space for these qualitative comments to live and grow. Our rating system will help to build a score for papers, which we hope may be quoted in reference sections and bibliographies of the future, as an indication of the quality of the research being cited, not just the number of citations. This also levels the playing field for early career researchers, allowing papers they have authored to build respectable ratings, regardless of how long they have been working and what their own h-Index may be.

Join us and start rating papers now!