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The inconsistency of the h‐index

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  • Ludo Waltman
  • Nees Jan van Eck

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2012. "The inconsistency of the h‐index," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 406-415, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:2:p:406-415
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21678
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    Cited by:

    1. Marcin Kozak & Lutz Bornmann, 2012. "A New Family of Cumulative Indexes for Measuring Scientific Performance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(10), pages 1-4, October.
    2. O. Mryglod & Yu. Holovatch & R. Kenna, 2022. "Big fish and small ponds: why the departmental h-index should not be used to rank universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3279-3292, June.
    3. Brady Lund, 2019. "Examination of correlates of H-index as a measure of research productivity for library and information science faculty in the United States and Canada," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 897-915, August.
    4. Paul Sebo & Sylvain de Lucia, 2021. "Evaluation of the productivity of hospital-based researchers: comparative study between the h-index and the h(fa)-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 7087-7096, August.
    5. Sigifredo Laengle & José M. Merigó & Nikunja Mohan Modak & Jian-Bo Yang, 2020. "Bibliometrics in operations research and management science: a university analysis," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 294(1), pages 769-813, November.
    6. Brito, Ricardo & Navarro, Alonso Rodríguez, 2021. "The inconsistency of h-index: A mathematical analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    7. Corey J A Bradshaw & Justin M Chalker & Stefani A Crabtree & Bart A Eijkelkamp & John A Long & Justine R Smith & Kate Trinajstic & Vera Weisbecker, 2021. "A fairer way to compare researchers at any career stage and in any discipline using open-access citation data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-15, September.
    8. Juan Antonio López Núñez & Jesús López-Belmonte & Antonio-José Moreno-Guerrero & Magdalena Ramos Navas-Parejo & Francisco-Javier Hinojo-Lucena, 2020. "Education and Diet in the Scientific Literature: A Study of the Productive, Structural, and Dynamic Development in Web of Science," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-17, June.
    9. Maor Weinberger & Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, 2021. "Diversity of success: measuring the scholarly performance diversity of tenured professors in the Israeli academia," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 2931-2970, April.
    10. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    11. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2020. "Minimal Impact One-Dimensional Arrays," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-11, May.
    12. Pantea Kamrani & Isabelle Dorsch & Wolfgang G. Stock, 2021. "Do researchers know what the h-index is? And how do they estimate its importance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5489-5508, July.
    13. Josep Freixas & Roger Hoerl & William S. Zwicker, 2023. "Nash's bargaining problem and the scale-invariant Hirsch citation index," Papers 2309.01192, arXiv.org.
    14. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau, 2021. "The h-index formalism," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6137-6145, July.
    15. Xu, Zeshui & Ge, Zijing & Wang, Xinxin & Skare, Marinko, 2021. "Bibliometric analysis of technology adoption literature published from 1997 to 2020," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    16. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann & Jonathan Adams, 2019. "The integrated impact indicator revisited (I3*): a non-parametric alternative to the journal impact factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1669-1694, June.
    17. Zoltán Krajcsák, 2021. "Researcher Performance in Scopus Articles ( RPSA ) as a New Scientometric Model of Scientific Output: Tested in Business Area of V4 Countries," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-23, October.
    18. Yang, Alex Jie & Wu, Linwei & Zhang, Qi & Wang, Hao & Deng, Sanhong, 2023. "The k-step h-index in citation networks at the paper, author, and institution levels," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    19. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    20. Yves Fassin, 2020. "The HF-rating as a universal complement to the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 965-990, November.

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