What is a good h-index? [with examples] - Paperpile (2024)

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What is a good h-index? [with examples] - Paperpile (1)

Content:

  • What is an h-index?
  • How to calculate your h-index
  • Now let’s talk numbers: what h-index is considered good?
  • What is a good h-index for a PhD student?
  • What is a good h-index for a Postdoc?
  • What is a good h-index for an assistant professor?
  • What is a good h-index for an associate professor?
  • What is a good h-index for a full professor?
  • Frequently Asked Questions about h-index
  • Related Articles

What is an h-index?

An h-index is a rough summary measure of a researcher’s productivity and impact. Productivity is quantified by the number of papers, and impact by the number of citations the researchers' publications have received. It can be useful for identifying the centrality of certain researchers as researchers with a higher h-index will, in general, have produced more work that is considered important by their peers.

➡️You can learn all about the h-index, why it is important, and how to calculate it, in this guide: The ultimate how-to-guide on the h-index

How to calculate your h-index

As Jorge E. Hirsch, the creator of the h-index describes it, the index h is “the number of papers with citation number ≥h.” While this formula might not explain much, it makes it clear any researcher is able to calculate their h-index. Below are some guides that will help you find or learn how to calculate your h-index:

➡️Learn how to calculate your h-index on Google Scholar

➡️Learn how to calculate your h-index using Scopus [3 steps]

➡️Learn how to calculate your h-index using Web of Science

➡️ The ultimate how-to-guide on the h-index (to calculate it yourself)

Now let’s talk numbers: what h-index is considered good?

According to Hirsch, a person with 20 years of research experience with an h-index of 20 is considered good, 40 is great, and 60 is remarkable.

But let's go into more detail and have a look at what a good h-index means in terms of your field of research and stage of career.

What is a good h-index for a PhD student?

It is very common for supervisors to expect up to three publications from PhD students. Given the lengthy process of publication and the fact that once the papers are out, they also need to be cited, having an h-index of 1 or 2 at the end of your PhD is a big achievement.

What is a good h-index for a Postdoc?

Given that there is no defined time for how long postdoctoral training can go on, let's assume that an average Postdoc is able to publish one paper a year. Building on the papers already published during his/her PhD studies, there is a good chance that after two years of postdoctoral training, it is a total of 5 papers. If each of these 5 papers has been cited 5 times, that makes an h-index of 5.

What is a good h-index for an assistant professor?

Below you will find a sample of assistant professors and their h-index ratings:

NameUniversityResearch areah-index

Yuan Lu

Yale

Cardiovascular epidemiology

30

Mohammad Alizadeh

MIT

Computer networks

44

Manuel A. Rivas

Stanford

Human genetics

39

Mark L. Hatzenbuehler

Columbia

LGBT health disparities

66

Martin J. Aryee

Harvard

Statistics

49

What is a good h-index for an associate professor?

Below you will find a sample of associate professors and their h-index ratings:

Nameh-indexUniversityResearch area

Ivan P. Gorlov

27

Dartmouth

Bioinformatics

Arvind Narayanan

41

Princeton

Information privacy

Yajaira Suarez

44

Yale

MicroRNAs

Richa Saxena

63

Harvard

Genetics

Alon Keinan

45

Cornell

Computational genomics

What is a good h-index for a full professor?

Below you will find a sample of full professors and their h-index ratings:

Nameh-indexUniversityResearch area

James E. Hansen

100

Columbia

Climate change

Olivia S. Mitchell

78

University of Pennsylvania

Economics

Fredo Durand

88

MIT

Computer graphics

Li-Jia Li

35

Stanford

Machine learning

Enrique Rodriguez Boulan

84

Cornell

Cell polarity

These numbers shouldn’t be taken as the yardstick of comparison, as every researcher has different experiences, and the h-index is not the only measure that defines them. Hirsch states that “obviously a single number can never give more than a rough approximation to an individual’s multifaceted profile, and many other factors should be considered in combination in evaluating an individual.”

In conclusion, having a good h-index is great, but every researcher's case is multifaceted. There are plenty of other aspects to consider while evaluating a researcher.

Frequently Asked Questions about h-index

🐹 What is an h-index?

An h-index is a rough summary measure of a researcher’s productivity and impact. Productivity is quantified by the number of papers, and impact by the number of citations the researchers' publications have received.

🐭 How do I calculate my h-index on Google Scholar?

Google Scholar can automatically calculate your h-index, read our guide How to calculate your h-index on Google Scholar for further instructions.

🐨 How do I calculate my h-index on Scopus?

Even though Scopus needs to crunch millions of citations to find the h-index, the look-up is pretty fast. Read our guide How to calculate your h-index using Scopus for further instructions.

🐰 How do I calculate my h-index using Web of Science?

Web of Science is a database that has compiled millions of articles and citations. This data can be used to calculate all sorts of bibliographic metrics including an h-index. Read our guide How to use Web of Science to calculate your h-index for further instructions.

🐼 Who invented the h-index?

Jorge E. Hirsch created the h-index in 2005. Here is the paper published in PNAS in which he outlines the h-index in detail.

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What is a good h-index? [with examples] - Paperpile (2024)

FAQs

What is a good h-index? [with examples] - Paperpile? ›

According to Hirsch, a person with 20 years of research experience with an h-index of 20 is considered good, 40 is great, and 60 is remarkable. But let's go into more detail and have a look at what a good h-index means in terms of your field of research and stage of career.

What is a good h-index for a paper? ›

Hirsch2 was of the opinion that 20 h-index is Good,40 is Outstanding and 60 is Exceptional but after 20 years of research life. He further pointed out that approximately 84% of Physicists with Nobel Prizes had h-index of 30.

What is a good h-index for a PhD candidate? ›

An h-index between 1 and 5 might be typical for students nearing the end of their PhD. This means you have 1 to 5 publications that have been cited at least 1 to 5 times, respectively. Your h-index can be calculated using tools like Google Scholar or Web of Science.

Is an h-index of 75 good? ›

h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals. h index of 15-20, fellowship in the National Physical Society. h index of 45 or higher, membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

What is the h-index with example? ›

The h-index is calculated by counting the number of publications for which an author has been cited by other authors at least that same number of times. For instance, an h-index of 17 means that the scientist has published at least 17 papers that have each been cited at least 17 times.

What is the h-index for full professor? ›

On average and good H-index for a PhD student is between 1 and 5, a postdoc between 2 and 17, an assistant professor between 4 – 35 and a full professor typically about 30+.

What is the average h-index of Nobel laureates? ›

The average h-index of price award winners (17.77) was found to be less than that of Nobel prize winners in physics (34.5), chemistry (65.17), and economics (67.31), as reported in previous research (Farhadi et al, 2013).

What is the h-index of Einstein? ›

The total number of citations is the area under the curve [26]. According to Microsoft Academic Graph, Einstein has an h-index of 67, and Higgs 8.

Who has the highest h-index in the world? ›

Scientists with High H-Indexes

At the time of writing, the highest score recorded by Google Scholar is 300, by researcher Ronald C Kessler from Harvard University.

What is a good h-index for a doctor? ›

According to Hirsch, a person with 20 years of research experience with an h-index of 20 is considered good, 40 is great, and 60 is remarkable.

Does h-index really matter? ›

Although having a single number that measures scientific performance is attractive, the h-index is only a rough indicator of scientific performance and should only be considered as such. Limitations of the h-index include the following: It does not take into account the number of authors on a paper.

Is an h-index of 3 high? ›

It's calculated by dividing a scientist's h-index by the number of times that have passed since the first publication, with a score of 1 being veritably good indeed, 2 being outstanding and 3 truly exceptional.

Why is my h-index so low? ›

The number is based on the papers a researcher publishes and the citations those papers get. Publishing a lot of highly cited articles will increase your h-index. On the other hand, getting a lot of citations on only one or two papers will not give you a high h-index.

What is the Google Scholar h-index? ›

The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each.

How many citations are good for a professor? ›

The difference between professors and associate professors begin rather to manifest at higher levels of performance, above around 15 publications and 100 citations. In numbers of individuals, 316 have more than 15 publications and 300 have more than 100 citations.

What is d-index vs h-index? ›

It is computed as the number h of papers receiving at least h citations [3]. The H-index and citation data we use are obtained from various bibliometric data sources. The Discipline H-index (D-index) is calculated by considering only the publications and their citation values deemed to belong to an examined discipline.

Is an h-index of 52 good? ›

According to Hirsch, a person with 20 years of research experience with an h-index of 20 is considered good, 40 is great, and 60 is remarkable.

Is 27 h-index good? ›

What is a Good H-Index? Hirsch reckons that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional. In his paper, Hirsch shows that successful scientists do, indeed, have high h-indices: 84% of Nobel Prize winners in physics, for example, had an h-index of at least 30.

What is the highest h-index in Google Scholar? ›

Top publications
Publicationh5-index
1.Nature488
2.IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition440
3.The New England Journal of Medicine434
4.Science409
96 more rows

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