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Grex Science Item 100: Hirsch "h" index for scientific productivity.
Entered by rcurl on Sun Sep 4 06:59:27 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........

3 responses total.

#1 of 3 by gull on Wed Sep 21 23:24:28 2005:

How long before we see a particular value of h being required for 
professors to get tenure? :P

#2 of 3 by rcurl on Thu Sep 22 02:39:42 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.

#3 of 3 by gull on Fri Sep 23 06:31:08 2005:

Unfortunately, yeah.

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