Hirsch "h" index for scientific productivity.

Sep 4 06:59 UTC 2005

There is a brief article in SCIENCE (19 August 2005) about the Jorge
Hirsch idea for a single number "h" to rank the productivity of
scientists. "h" is the largest number such that the researcher has h
papers with at least h subsequent citations each by later researchers.  
The statistics for determing h can be found in citation indexes, like the
ISI Web of Knowledge. Hirsh himself has h = 49, and one Edward Witten at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has the highest h he found,
110 (110 published papers with 110 or more citations!).

Since I have a number of publications, I calculated my own h, which is the
quite modest h = 11. Oh well, there are other things to life........

response 2 of 3:

Sep 22 02:39 UTC 2005

I'm sure promotion committees are looking at it, but at best it will be
"just one factor" in academic promotion. $$$$ in grant funding carries
a very heavy weight now in these decisions.