LibAnswers: Library answers

The H-index is a common author level citation metric. The methodology takes the number of publications by an author and the number of citations to those publications and finds where the 2 numbers equal, for example, a H-index of 4 means that the author has published at least 4 documents that have been cited 4 times. This metric favours researchers who have been publishing over a longer period of time, as there has been more time to publish and accrue citations.

It is recommended that you use the Scopus database to find your H-index by searching for yourself as the author. It will be displayed on your author page.

Google Scholar and Web of Science may give a different H-index for the same author and this is due to differences in indexing. In general, Scholar indexes everything regardless of quality, whereas Scopus and Web of Science are both curated indexes of research publications, with Scopus indexing slightly more content overall. Publish or Perish has the ability to aggregate all sources of citation data.

For further help please contact Joanne Fitzpatrick, Research Data Manager: j.fitzpatrick2@lancaster.ac.uk