The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output.

-- J.E. Hirsch

The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the published body of work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications. The h-index can be manually determined using citation databases or using automatic tools. 

The h-index shows how many papers published by the author have been cited proportionately. An index of h means that the author has h papers that have been cited at least h times. 

For example, if Dr. Jones has published eight papers but only five of them have been cited five or more times, the maximum h-index Dr. Jones can have is five. 

Publication with Number of Times Cited

• Publication #1 - cited 33 times
• Publication #2 - cited 27 times
• Publication #3 - cited 11 times
• Publication #4 - cited 8 times
• Publication #5 - cited 7 times <-- FIVE is the h-index for this author

• Publication #6 - cited 3 times
• Publication #7 - cited 2 times
• Publication #8 - cited 0 times

Even though seven of the papers have received citations from other authors, Dr. Jones' h-index can be no higher than five. In order for his h-index to get to six, one of his other papers must have been cited at least six times.

Web of Science will calculate your h-index for you but all papers you wish to include must be in the Web of Science index. Other places to find the number of times a paper has been cited are in Scopus and Google Scholar. To find your h-index, list your publications sorted by the number of times each has been cited by others. Your h-index will be the last publication that has an equal or higher number of cites than the number of publications.