Does the h index have predictive power?

doi:10.1073/pnas.0707962104

Does the h index have predictive power?

J. E. Hirsch*

Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0319

Edited by Manuel Cardona, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany, and approved October 2, 2007 (received for review August 23, 2007)

Abstract

Bibliometric measures of individual scientific achievement are of particular interest if they can be used to predict future achievement. Here we report results of an empirical study of the predictive power of the h index compared with other indicators. Our findings indicate that the h index is better than other indicators considered (total citation count, citations per paper, and total paper count) in predicting future scientific achievement. We discuss reasons for the superiority of the h index.

Footnotes

E-mail: jhirsch{at}ucsd.edu
Author contributions: J.E.H. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The author declares no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
↵ † Ball P, Meeting of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, March 26–30, 2007, Regensburg, Germany.
↵ ‡ In using the very valuable ISI resource for individual evaluations, one should keep in mind that it has limitations, e.g., (i) it will, of course, miss citations where the author's name is misspelled; (ii) books, book chapters, and most conference proceedings are not included; (iii) citations to “Rapid Communications” papers in Phys Rev B that include (R) in the citation are currently not counted by ISI.
↵ § Of course, it will often be the case that a junior coauthor will have performed most of the actual work for the paper. Nevertheless, if the paper has senior coauthors and ended up with a large number of citations, it will often be the case that the senior coauthor(s) will have played the crucial role.