H-index = scholarly impact

A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] N_p papers have at least h citations each, and the other (N_p − h) papers have at most h citations each.

Example: a researcher with an H-Index of 15 has 15 papers cited at least 15 times.

The H-Index was developed by Jorge Hirsch in his quest to find a better way to rank authors within their field. You can read his article on this metric in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Advantages

--Includes both quantity and impact in a single measure

--Allows for comparisons within disciplines

Disadvantages

--Is not as accurate for early-career researchers or for fields with less emphasis on journal articles

Using Citation Metrics to determine Author Impact can help scholars not only identify significant voices in their field, but also provide one indicator of an author's perceived value - by demonstrating where and how one's work has been cited. Citation metrics have been applied for purposes of hiring, promotion and tenure.

Citation Databases and Indices can be used to:

--Demonstrate how often an author's work has been cited.
--Discover who is doing related work.
--Track the published work of colleagues and competitors.
--Explore the evolution of theories and ideas through citation tracking.
--Identify key authors in a field.
--Build a research profile so others can find and follow one's work.

No one tool will provide complete information about an author's citations. Each database only searches material in that database. It is best to explore multiple sources.

Also remember that citation counts never tell the whole story. They don't indicate why a item was cited or how significant or positive the reference was, and the indices that measure author impact often don't consider the duration of an author's career. Lastly, citation counts and indices only should be compared within an academic discipline. Publishing patterns in physics, for example, differ from those in anthropology.

To access your H-Index and citation metrics in Google Scholar, create a Google Scholar Citation Profile.

You can find other authors' profiles when searching by author name in Google Scholar. For example, here is Dr. Majid Molki's profile:

Perform an Author search in Scopus to find the H-Index and citation metrics. View this tutorial or read the script for more information on author searching. 

The H-Index and citation metrics will only include those articles indexed in Scopus.