H-index Calculator of Scientist Impact and Influence

The H-index, a.k.a. Hirsch number, created by physicist Jorge Hirsch, is an index is designed to go beyond simple statistics such as the total number of citations or publications, to distinguish influential scientists from those who simply publish many papers. The H-index, which accounts for both is also not highly sensitive to single papers that have many citations. The H-index is relatively effective in comparing researchers working in the same scientific field, and not comparable across disciplines due to different publishing and citation patterns.

The H-index was recently also recognized and featured in an article published in Nature, "Index aims for fair ranking of scientists" Nature. 2005 Aug 18;436:900, which highlighted the H-index's potential use in informing decisions regarding a scientist's tenure, promotion, election to scientific bodies such as the National Academy of Science, and the Royal Society, as well as informative in determining a scientist's impact relative to Nobel Prize laureates.

This Google-based H-INDEX calculation program, developed by Michael Schwartzbach, computes the the H-index number of an individual scientist's scientific impact and influence, based on the original methods described by Hirsch 2005. This web program uses the reputable Google Scholar engine's scientific citation database as basis for calculation.

Name of scientist: (required)



Other optional search parameters:

--Additional key words: (This option is only necessary for non-unique names. One may use AND, OR options in queries. We recommend using academic institution, geographic location, or scientific discipline keywords as optional search terms)


--Scientific discipline: (leave all unchecked to search all fields)

Biology, Life Sciences, and Environmental Science
Medicine, Pharmacology, and Veterinary Science
Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics
Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science
Chemistry and Materials Science
Business, Administration, Finance, and Economics
Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities

**Note: This calculation service may experience heavy server load at peak times of the day. Also, because this program directly interfaces with the Google Scholar database, Google may limit the total number of pings by users in a given period of time. Therefore, please be patient if this program is temporarily unavailable, and bookmark this site and return at an off-peak time to run the program. Thank you.***