H-Index and Research Impact Metrics Guide

Understand, calculate, and responsibly interpret bibliometric indicators including h-index, impact factor, and related metrics.

Core Bibliometric Indicators

H-Index

The h-index (Hirsch index) is defined as: a researcher has an h-index of h if h of their papers have each been cited at least h times.

Example: If a researcher has published 20 papers with citation counts [120, 80, 55, 40, 22, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 5, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], their h-index is 10 (10 papers with at least 10 citations each).