Paper Info
Title
The inconsistency of the h-index
Abstract
The h-index is a popular bibliometric indicator for assessing individual scientists. We criticize the h-index from a theoretical point of view. We argue that for the purpose of measuring the overall scientific impact of a scientist (or some other unit of analysis), the h-index behaves in a counterintuitive way. In certain cases, the mechanism used by the h-index to aggregate publication and citation statistics into a single number leads to inconsistencies in the way in which scientists are ranked. Our conclusion is that the h-index cannot be considered an appropriate indicator of a scientist's overall scientific impact. Based on recent theoretical insights, we discuss what kind of indicators can be used as an alternative to the h-index. We pay special attention to the highly cited publications indicator. This indicator has a lot in common with the h-index, but unlike the h-index it does not produce inconsistent rankings. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1002/asi.21678
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Keywords
DocType
Volume
certain case,recent theoretical insight,aggregate publication,wiley periodicals,publications indicator,overall scientific impact,theoretical point,popular bibliometric indicator,individual scientist,appropriate indicator,unit of analysis,indexation,digital library
Journal
63
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1532-2882
92
PageRank 
References 
Authors
3.34
38
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ludo Waltman12236105.47
Nees Jan Van Eck2163775.45