The Hirsch-index was developed by Professor Jorge E Hirsch in 2005. The index measures the researcher’s publication effectiveness and the significance of the publications. The larger the h-index is the greater is the number of the researcher's publications that have been cited.
The h-index is a positive total value, which is calculated as follows:
The researcher has index h if h of their Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.
To be observed regarding the h-index:
Read more about h-index in the Finnish national guide to publication metrics.
Step 1 Find publications
Search in Web of Science Core Collection.
1. Write the author's last name, followed by the initial of the first name into the author field (example: Pekka Vallittu -> vallittu p*). Scandinavian letters are not always recognized by the database, so it is recommended to write, for example, järvinen -> jarvinen OR jaervinen OR järvinen.
1.1. On the Researchers tab you can look for algorithmically generated author records. Profiles claimed by the author are identified with a green tick.
To search by ORCID ID or WoS ResearcherID select from the drop-down menu Author Identifiers search.
2. Refine your documents search results. If you, for example, wish to include only peer-reviewed articles and proceedings papers (not editorial materials), you can select these document types. If you, on the other hand, wish to narrow results by affiliation (organisation), choose Affiliations, and from there e.g. University of Turku (univ Turku).
3. If your result list still includes articles written by a wrong author, you can select the articles you want to keep one by one and then click "Add to Marked List". Note that if there are several articles on different pages, you will have to pick the articles one by one and then add them to marked list one page at a time.
Step 2 Create a citation report
Method 1: Creating a citation report for an Author record
If you searched for author records on the Researchers tab and the publication list displayed in the Author record shows the correct publications, you will see the h-index on the right-hand side of the page. Click View Citation Report to generate a full report. From citation report it is also possible to remove wrong publications from the list.
Method 2: Creating a citation report in the Marked List area
If you added the publications you wish to include in your citation report to Marked list, open the list by clicking the Marked List icon at the top left of the page. Here it is still possible to remove wrong publications from the list by selecting them one by one and clicking Remove. When the correct articles are displayed on the list, click “Citation Report”. The database will automatically calculate, e.g. the h-index for the publications on your Marked List.
Method 3: Creating a citation report for all search results
If all search results have the correct author, you may create the citation report directly from the result list display by clicking on ”Citation Report” on the top of the results page.
Step 3 Citation report results
The citation report shows, for example, the number of citations to the researcher's articles as well as the researcher's h-index.
You can remove articles from the result list at the bottom of the page. Removed items will be excluded from the h-index.
You can save citation report as Excel file from Export Full Report. Name the file and select under Format > Excel File and click Export.
1. Choose the Authors tab
2. Enter the author's last name and the initial of the first name into the appropriate search boxes.
3. Select the right person from the author list
Tip! Sometimes there may be more than one entry for the same author. In that case, you can ask Scopus to merge your author data. Choose the authors to be merged, then click "Request to merge authors" and follow the instructions.
4. The h-index for the person appears in the author data. The h-indexes of the researchers include citations back to 1970.
Click "Citation overview" if you want to exclude self-citations or refine years.
In Google Scholar Profiles researchers can create and maintain their own account (gmail account) and add their publications found through the Google Scholar search. The profile shows the number of times the publication has been cited and an automatically computed h-index. The profile can be public or private.
Use the Google Scholar search or sign in to your own Google Scholar Profile account.
1. Enter author's name into Google Scholar search.
2. If the researcher has created a public Google Scholar use rprofile, it will appear first in the result list.
3. Researcher's h-index on author profile page has been calculated using the Google Scholar data.
Publish or Perish is a free software developed by the Australian Anne-Wil Harzing that uses the Google Scholar data to analyze citations. The software is available for downloading from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm.
The software can be used, for example, to evaluate author impact, journal impact and to create various indexes (h-index, g-index etc.).
