16.3.1 H-index

Proposed by J.E. Hirsch in his paper An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output, arXiv:physics/0508025 v5 29 Sep 2005. It aims to provide a robust single-number metric of an academic's impact, combining quality with quantity. A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than h citations each. Hence an academic with an h-index of 20 has 20 papers with at least 20 citations each.

Our ten professors differ substantially in their h-index, with the Pharmacist having an h-index that is more than three times as high as the Cinema Studies academic. On average the professors in the Sciences have a higher h-index (28) than the professors in the Social Sciences and Humanities (21). However, there are individual Social Sciences academics that have h-indices that are equal to or higher than some of the Science academics.

Table 2: Citation metrics across fields

Field	Citations	h-index	# of authors	Hi-index	Hc-index	Hirsch's m	Indiv m
Cell Biology	2412	24	3.90	15	15	0.92	0.58
Computer Science	6393	34	2.57	22	22	1.10	0.71
Mathematics	742	15	2.95	8	8	0.63	0.33
Pharmacology	5754	39	3.08	23	18	0.93	0.62
Physics	3153	30	2.66	18	23	1.15	0.69
Sciences	3690	28	3.03	17	17	0.95	0.59
Business	2245	24	1.62	19	21	1.50	1.19
Cinema Studies	1094	12	1.14	12	9	0.36	0.36
Education	4756	28	1.51	25	25	1.00	0.89
Linguistics	1825	21	1.96	18	12	0.88	0.62
Political Science	2540	22	1.90	18	14	0.85	0.69
Social Sciences	2485	21	1.63	18	16	0.93	0.75