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Evaluating Scholarly Publications for Tenure and Promotion: How to find your h-index

This guide will help you find evidence of the value of your publications to use in your FAR.

How to find your h-index from the Web of Science

"The h-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications 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." 

To find an author's h-index, start from the library's web page, Click on Databases A-Z, and search for "Web of Science."

Articles tab

Choose Web of Science Core Collection.

Web of Science

Search for the organization using the Select from Index feature and add another field. Search for the author using the last name then first initial with an asterisk.

Search for the author

Click on Create Citation Report on the right side of the results screen.

Create a citation report

The h-index will be one of the statistics given on the right.

h-index

Problems


Searching a specific author in Web of Science can be tricky because not all journals enter an individual's name using the same format (some use initials, some use full names, etc.).  Web of Science usually uses lastname plus first and middle initial. You may find multiple authors with the same initials. Adding the name of the author's institution can help. You may have to experiment to get the best results or contact a librarian for help.

 

More information on the h-index

Reference: Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569-16572. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507655102

Iglesias, J. E., & Pecharromán, C. (2007). Scaling the h-index for different scientific isi fields. Scientometrics, 73(3), 303-320. doi:10.1007/s11192-007-1805-x