index definition phd

What is a good H-index for each academic position?

Navigating the complex landscape of academia often involves decoding a series of metrics and benchmarks.

Among these, the h-index stands out as a critical measure of a scholar’s productivity and influence.

But what exactly constitutes a “good” h-index? And how does it vary across different academic positions and disciplines—from PhD students to full professors in fields as diverse as Life Sciences, Engineering, and Humanities?

On average and good H-index for a PhD student is between 1 and 5, a postdoc between 2 and 17, an assistant professor between 4 – 35 and a full professor typically about 30+.

Our comprehensive blog delves into the nuances of the h-index, its relevance in academic promotions, and the challenges it presents. 

Here is a quick summary of h-indexes that could be considered typical in different fields:

What is the h-index metric?

The h-index is a metric designed to quantify the productivity and impact of a researcher, and increasingly, groups or journals.

Developed by physicist Jorge Hirsch, this index is computed as the number of papers (number of publications) with citation numbers larger or equal to ‘h.’

For instance, if a researcher has four papers cited at least four times each, their h-index is 4.

The metric comes in handy when comparing scholars within the same field but has limitations when used across disciplines. This is due to factors such as the average number of references per paper, the typical productivity of researchers in the field, and the field’s overall size.

Several databases, like Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus, offer h-index calculations. However, it’s crucial to note that your h-index may vary between platforms due to differences in their database’s scope and what papers they include.

The h-index has become a crucial factor in academia for promotions, with assistant professors often striving for a ‘good h-index’ to become a full professor.

The h-index is not without its challenges:

• it may not accurately reflect the impact of scholars with fewer but highly cited publications. In such cases, the h-index may paint an incomplete picture of an author’s impact, favoring those who publish more frequently regardless of the quality or impact of their work.
• it is heavily influenced by the field’s norms. For example, in disciplines where papers usually have fewer citations, even established researchers may have a relatively low h-index.

Despite its limitations, the h-index remains a widely-used metric for assessing the influence and productivity of researchers, offering a more nuanced picture than simply counting the number of papers published or the number of citations.

How to calculate your h-index score

Calculating your h-index is a straightforward process, especially if you use academic databases that track citations. Here’s a simple step-by-step guide:

Manual Calculation

• List Your Publications : Make a list of all your academic publications that have been cited.
• Count Citations : For each publication, find out the number of times it has been cited. You can use Google Scholar, Web of Science, or Scopus for this, or you can manually check academic journals.
• Sort by Citation Count : Arrange the list of publications in descending order based on the number of citations each paper has received.
• Find the H-Index : Start from the top of the sorted list and look for the last publication where the number of citations is greater than or equal to the position in the sorted list. That position number is your h-index.

For example, if you have papers cited 10, 8, 5, 4, and 2 times, then your h-index would be 4 because you have 4 papers that have been cited at least 4 times.

Using Google Scholar

• Create/Log into Account : Go to Google Scholar and create an account if you haven’t. If you already have one, log in.
• Add Publications : You’ll be prompted to add your publications to your Google Scholar profile.
• View H-Index : Once your publications are added, Google Scholar automatically calculates your h-index and displays it on your profile.

Using Web of Science

• Access the Database : Go to Web of Science and log in or access it via your institution.
• Search for Author : Search for your name in the author search.
• Check H-Index : Your h-index will be displayed along with other citation metrics.

Using Scopus

• Access and Search : Go to Scopus and use the author search to find your profile.
• Locate H-Index : Your profile will display your h-index along with other metrics.

Calculating your h-index is an essential part of understanding your academic impact, and these steps should help you determine yours.

What is a good h-index for a PhD student?

determining what constitutes a “good” h-index for a Ph.D. student can vary greatly depending on the academic field, the number of years the student has been in the program, and other factors like collaborative work and the prominence of the journals where they’ve published.

Here’s a table that attempts to provide some generalized benchmarks:

It’s worth noting that while a “good” h-index can be indicative of a productive and impactful research career, it’s not the only metric to consider. Quality of research, contribution to the field, and other factors like teaching and community service are also important.

What is a good h-index for a Postdoc?

A “good” h-index for a Postdoc will typically be higher than for a PhD student, given the additional years of research and publications.

Again, the numbers can vary depending on the field, the productivity of the researcher, and other variables like the rate of collaboration and the types of journals in which they’ve published.

Here’s a generalized table:

Remember that while the h-index is a useful metric, it’s not the end-all measure of academic success. Qualities like the impact and innovation of one’s research, mentorship, and broader contributions to science and the academic community are also vital aspects of a successful Postdoc experience.

What’s a good h-index for an assistant professor academic position?

The h-index for an Assistant Professor would usually be higher than for a PhD student or Postdoc due to more years of research and publications.

Like in previous cases, the “good” h-index varies significantly based on academic field, years in the role, and other variables such as the type of institution, rate of collaboration, and types of journals in which the researcher has published.

It’s worth mentioning that although a “good” h-index is beneficial for career advancement, including promotions to Associate or Full Professor roles, it’s not the only metric of importance.

Peer review, teaching effectiveness, and service to the academic community are also critical factors in evaluating an Assistant Professor’s performance.

What is a good h-index for an associate professor?

The h-index for an Associate Professor would typically be higher still, given the further years of research and publishing, as well as the likelihood of having guided PhD students and Postdocs, which often results in collaborative publications.

Again, while a strong h-index is beneficial for career advancement and often required for promotion to Full Professor, it is not the sole indicator of academic success.

Qualities like innovative research, excellence in teaching, and meaningful service to the academic community are also critical in evaluating an Associate Professor’s overall performance.

H-index required for an academic position – Full professor? 

A Full Professor is generally expected to have a high h-index, reflecting a long career with significant contributions to research.

It’s important to recognize that the h-index will vary by academic field and will often be influenced by a range of factors such as international collaborations, research funding, and the impact factor of journals where the work is published.

Here’s a generalized table for what might be considered a “good” h-index for a Full Professor:

A Full Professor’s career is also evaluated based on other achievements, such as securing research grants, publishing influential works beyond journal articles, mentorship, administrative roles, and service to the academic and broader community.

Wrapping up – what h-index is considered good?

The quest to quantify academic productivity and influence has led to the widespread adoption of the h-index as an evaluative metric.

While this index offers a useful, albeit simplified, snapshot of a researcher’s impact, it’s crucial to understand its nuances and limitations.

Notably, what constitutes a “good” h-index can vary dramatically depending on several factors, including the academic discipline, stage of career, and other variables such as types of publications and rate of collaboration.

This blog has provided a comprehensive guide to the h-index, outlining its significance, methodology for calculation, and what might be considered typical scores across various academic stages and fields.

The h-index should not be viewed in isolation.

Other qualitative factors like the quality of research, peer review, teaching effectiveness, and service to the academic community are equally vital in evaluating an academic’s overall performance.

The h-index faces challenges such as not accounting for the quality or societal impact of a researcher’s work and not translating well across different disciplines.

As a result, while the h-index can serve as a useful tool in academic evaluations, it should be used in conjunction with other metrics and qualitative assessments for a more rounded understanding of a scholar’s contributions.

So, whether you are a PhD student or a full professor, it’s important to not only be aware of your h-index but also to engage in a broader reflection of your academic goals and contributions. 

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

Thank you for visiting Academia Insider.

We are here to help you navigate Academia as painlessly as possible. We are supported by our readers and by visiting you are helping us earn a small amount through ads and affiliate revenue - Thank you!

2024 © Academia Insider

• Maps & Floorplans
• Libraries A-Z

• Ellis Library (main)
• Engineering Library
• Geological Sciences
• Journalism Library
• Law Library
• Mathematical Sciences
• MU Digital Collections
• Veterinary Medical
• More Libraries...
• Instructional Services
• Course Reserves
• Course Guides
• Schedule a Library Class
• Class Assessment Forms
• Recordings & Tutorials
• Research & Writing Help
• More class resources
• Places to Study
• Borrow, Request & Renew
• Call Numbers
• Computers, Printers, Scanners & Software
• Digital Media Lab
• Equipment Lending: Laptops, cameras, etc.
• Subject Librarians
• Writing Tutors
• More In the Library...
• Undergraduate Students
• Graduate Students
• Faculty & Staff
• Researcher Support
• Distance Learners
• International Students
• More Services for...
• View my MU Libraries Account (login & click on My Library Account)
• View my MOBIUS Checkouts
• Renew my Books (login & click on My Loans)
• Place a Hold on a Book
• Request Books from Depository
• View my ILL@MU Account
• Set Up Alerts in Databases
• More Account Information...

Maximizing your research identity and impact

• Researcher Profiles
• h-index for resesarchers-definition

h-index for journals

H-index for institutions, computing your own h-index, ways to increase your h-index, limitations of the h-index, variations of the h-index.

• Using Scopus to find a researcher's h-index
• Additional resources for finding a researcher's h-index
• Journal Impact Factor & other journal rankings
• Altmetrics This link opens in a new window
• Research Repositories
• Open Access This link opens in a new window
• Methods for increasing researcher impact & visibility

h-index for researchers-definition

• The h-index is a measure used to indicate the impact and productivity of a researcher based on how often his/her publications have been cited.
• The physicist, Jorge E. Hirsch, provides the following definition for the h-index:  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 no more than h citations each. (Hirsch, JE (15 November 2005) PNAS 102 (46) 16569-16572)
• The h -index is based on the highest number of papers written by the author that have had at least the same number of citations.
• A researcher with an h-index of 6 has published six papers that have been cited at least six times by other scholars.  This researcher may have published more than six papers, but only six of them have been cited six or more times. 

Whether or not a h-index is considered strong, weak or average depends on the researcher's field of study and how long they have been active.  The h-index of an individual should be considered in the context of the h-indices of equivalent researchers in the same field of study.

Definition :  The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a journal with a h-index of 20 has published 20 articles that have been cited 20 or more times.

Available from:

• SJR (Scimago Journal & Country Rank)

Whether or not a h-index is considered strong, weak or average depends on the discipline the journal covers and how long it has published. The h-index of a journal should be considered in the context of the h-indices of other journals in similar disciplines.

Definition :  The h-index of an institution is the largest number h such that at least h articles published by researchers at the institution were cited at least h times each. For example, if an institution has a h-index of 200 it's researchers have published 200 articles that have been cited 200 or more times.

Available from: exaly

In a spreadsheet, list the number of times each of your publications has been cited by other scholars. 

Sort the spreadsheet in descending order by the number of  times each publication is cited.  Then start counting down until the article number is equal to or not greater than the times cited.

Article                   Times Cited

1                              50          

2                              15          

3                              12

4                              10

5                              8

6                              7              == =>h index is 6

7                              5             

8                              1

How to successfully boost your h-index (enago academy, 2019)

Glänzel, Wolfgang On the Opportunities and Limitations of the H-index. , 2006

• h -index based upon data from the last 5 years
•  i-10 index is the number of articles by an author that have at least ten citations. 
•  i-10 index was created by Google Scholar .
• Used to compare researchers with different lengths of publication history
• m-index =   ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________ h-index _______________                      # of years since author’s 1 st publication

Using Scopus to find an researcher's h-index

Additional resources for finding a researcher's h-index.

Web of Science Core Collection or Web of Science All Databases

• Perform an author search
• Create a citation report for that author.
• The h-index will be listed in the report.

Set up your author profile in the following three resources.  Each resource will compute your h-index.  Your h-index may vary since each of these sites collects data from different resources.

• Google Scholar Citations Computes h-index based on publications and cited references in Google Scholar .
• Researcher ID
• Computes h-index based on publications and cited references in the last 20 years of Web of Science .
• << Previous: Researcher Profiles
• Next: Journal Impact Factor & other journal rankings >>
• Last Updated: Jul 8, 2024 3:20 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/researchidentity

Research guidance, Research Journals, Top Universities

Explaining H-index, i10-index, G-index & other research metrics

This blog post aims to explain various  research metrics like the h-index, i-10 index, and g-index . Moreover, we will also be explaining how you can increase these research metrics .

Page Contents

Measuring your research impact

Researchers use different metrics to measure the quality of published papers in journals . It basically gives an idea of the impact of any research paper . These metrics can be applied to any publication on any subject across the world. Through research metrics, one can monitor and quantify published articles. These citation metrics ultimately help in getting a university’s ranking .

Research metrics are one of the most established ways to measure the quality of research work. It tells the importance of particular research. Nowadays, H-index, impact factor , G-index, i-10 index are commonly used research metrics. These metrics help in measuring how much a researcher’s article is cited by the co-researchers. It helps in increasing the impact of the research work.  Researchers can use these metrics for availing various fellowships and scholarships, and gaining job opportunities across the world. 

Also, read the following articles:

Difference between SCI, SCIE, and ESCI journals

Difference between Scopus and Web of Science (WoS)

What is the h-index?

It is commonly known as the Hirsch number or Hirsch index. It was developed by American physicist Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005. h-index can be defined as for a given value of h, the researchers should h number of published articles that are cited at least by h-times. Suppose the author has an h-index of 25, which means that each of his published articles is cited at least 25 times by other researchers. It mainly gives an idea of the quality of the research papers. Generally, the higher the h-index, the greater the impact of a research paper will be. Thus, the h-index can be used to measure the quality and quantity of the research paper simultaneously. The h-index for any author can be determined manually with the help of any citation database. Using Scopus or Web of Science data, the h-index can also be calculated.

What is the i-10 index?

It is another commonly used research metric by the authors/researchers. i-10 index is provided by Google Scholar . It can define as a measure of having publications with at least 10 citations. For example, if an author/researcher’s i-10 index is 6, it indicates that six of his/her publications are cited 10 times. i-10 index also helps in increasing the weightage of any student profile. The main advantage of the i-10 index is that it can be calculated very easily. Google Scholar provides easy and free access to find out these metrics. 

Charles Robert Darwin, a renowned scientist, has the highest number of citations to date. This scientist has 156678 citations with an h-index of 106 and an i-10 index of 526. This means this researcher has received at least 10 citations for each of the 526 published articles. An h-index of 106 means that, out of his total publications, his 106 articles have been cited at least 106 times by different researchers.

What is G-index?

It is another level of measuring research metrics. It was suggested by Leo Egge in 2006. In general, the h-index does include a citation count of highly cites papers. But g-index helps in boosting the profile of a researcher by giving preference to highly cited papers. G-index is basically an advanced version of the h-index.  G-index measures the citation performance for a set of articles. A g-index of 20 indicates that the top 20 publications in a researcher/author profile are cited by 400 times (20 2 ). Similarly, a g-index of 10 indicates that the top 10 publications in a researcher profile are cited by 100 times (10 2) . 

How to increase the h-index? 

In the present scenario, the quality of any published article is measured by the number of citations he/she received, research metrics like the impact factor of the journal he/she has published, and the h-index of any author profile. Generally, during the entire research career, if the researcher receives of h-index of 25 or more, it is considered to be an excellent researcher’s profile. However, on average most of the researchers have an h-index between 10-15.

• In order to increase the h-index, one must publish papers of high quality. The researcher should ensure that he/she has not published any article in predatory/fake journals . The researcher should publish more and more original research articles . Although, sometimes publishing more review articles receives a greater number of citations , that ultimately increases the h-index in a profile.  
• Secondly, another way of increasing the h-index is through proper communication of the published article. He/she can advertise through various social media platforms such as Twitter , and ResearchGate, and continuously update the Google scholar profile. This will mainly help in increasing the visibility of published articles. 
• Thirdly, the researchers while writing the manuscript , he/she should ensure that the title of the paper is simple, clear, short, and concise. He/she should use a maximum of 5-6 appropriate keywords in the abstract. The abstract should be written in a very informative manner. It should briefly describe the research study. The research paper should always explain the novelty/newness of his/her article. Usually, the first sentence of the article appears in the all-search engines. So, it should be written in a very attractive manner. The abstract should be written in a such way it gives an overall summary of the research findings. 
• Fourthly, if it is possible, the researcher should publish in open-access journals . OA journals also undergo a peer-review process. Generally, these journals are available on online platforms which are easy to access and free of charge. Through open-access journals, readers can get full-text access to published articles easily. It will ultimately draw the attention of more audiences, which will ultimately help in gaining citations, thus increasing the h-index. 

What is considered to be a good i-10 index? 

Similar to the h-index, if the author/researcher has an i-10 index of 25 or more, it is considered an excellent research profile. An i-10 index of 25 means that, out of total publications, the researcher has received at least 10 citations for every 25 published articles. The i-10 index differs from researcher to researcher. It mainly depends on the subject area and sub-section of the research area. Generally, publishing more articles related to solving practical problems receives a greater number of citations. Professors with arts and humanities backgrounds may not have a higher i-index as compared to professors with science backgrounds. However, the i-10 index is the second-well-recognized research metric after the h-index.

I Hope, this blog post will help you to understand various research metrics used in research.

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to find your h-index on Google Scholar

How to calculate your h-index using Google Scholar

The name says it all: get more insights using harzing's "publish or perish", can you trust the h-index calculated with google scholar, frequently asked questions about finding your h-index on google scholar, related articles.

Google Scholar is a search engine with a special focus on academic papers and patents. It's limited in functionality compared to the major academic databases Scopus and Web of Science , but it is free, and you will easily know your way around because it is like doing a search on Google.

While Scopus and Web of Science limit their analyses to published journal articles, conference proceedings, and books, Google Scholar uses the entire internet as its source of data. As a result, the h-index reported by Google Scholar tends to be higher than the one found in the other databases.

➡️  What is the h-index?

Google Scholar can automatically calculate your h-index; you just need to set up a profile first. By default, Google Scholar profiles are public - allowing others to find you and see your publications and h-index. However, if you don't want to have such a public web presence, you can un-tick the "make my profile public" box on the final page of setting up your profile.

Once you have set up your profile, the h-index will be displayed in the upper right corner. Besides the classic h-index, Google also reports an i10-index along with the h-index. The i10-index is a simple measurement that shows how many of the author's papers have 10 or more citations.

Google Scholar also has a special author search , where you can look up the author profiles of others. It will, however, only show results for scholars with public profiles, as well as those of historical scientists like Albert Einstein .

Google Scholar's extensive database might list publications that most academics would not include in an h-index analysis. So it might be useful to vet the papers before calculating the h-index. Scopus and Web of Science offer such functionality to some extent, but for Google Scholar it's not possible to do right in your browser. However, there is a free desktop application called Publish or Perish , that allows you to just do that. It's available on Windows, and with some effort, you can also run it on macOS and Linux.

In order to check an author's h-index with Publish or Perish go to "Query > New Google Scholar Profile Query". Enter the scholar's name in the search box and click lookup. A window will open with potential matches. After selecting a scholar, the program will query Google Scholar for citation data and populate a list of papers, and present summary statistics on the right of this list. The list is particularly helpful because it can be used to exclude false positives.

In addition to the standard h-index, Publish or Perish, also calculates Egghe's g-index , along with normalized and annual individual h-indexes. You can read more about how these are calculated in the Publish or Perish manual .

As illustrated in Stephen Hawking's Google Scholar h-index and also noted by others , the h-index in Google Scholar tends to be higher than in Scopus or Web of Science. The main reason for this discrepancy is mainly attributed to the use of different data sources.

While Google Scholar grabs citation information from all over the internet, Scopus and Web of Science restrict their data sources to classic academic sources. Each approach is valid on its own. One could say that Google Scholar's h-index is more up-to-date as it also includes "early citations" from pre-prints before the article is actually published in an academic journal.

Also with the rise of "altmetrics", there is generally a trend to measure the resonance of academic papers outside the strict academic world. However, since Google Scholar's approach is fully automatic and not subject to any review, it can also be manipulated rather easily .

For example, you could upload false scholarly papers that give unsupported citation credit, or add papers to the Google Scholar profile that were not even authored by the person in question. Yes, there is room for improvement, but Google Scholar's h-index is a great free alternative to subscription-based databases.

You can learn how to calculate your h-index using Scopus and Web of Science below:

➡️  How to use Scopus to calculate your h-index

➡️  How to use Web of Science to calculate your h-index

An h-index is a rough summary measure of a researcher’s productivity and impact . Productivity is quantified by the number of papers, and impact by the number of citations the researchers' publications have received.

Even though Scopus needs to crunch millions of citations to find the h-index, the look-up is pretty fast. Read our guide How to calculate your h-index using Scopus for further instructions.

Web of Science is a database that has compiled millions of articles and citations. This data can be used to calculate all sorts of bibliographic metrics including an h-index. Read our guide How to use Web of Science to calculate your h-index for further instructions.

The h-index is not something that needs to be calculated on a daily basis, but it's good to know where you are for several reasons. First, climbing the h-index ladder is something worth celebrating. But more importantly, the h-index is one of the measures funding agencies or the university's hiring committee calculate when you apply for a grant or a position. Given the often huge number of applications, the h-index is calculated in order to rank candidates and apply a pre-filter.

An h-index is calculated as the number of papers with a citation number ≥ h. An h-index of 3 hence means that the author has published at least three articles, of which each has been cited at least three times.

Eugene McDermott Library

H-index using web of science, scopus, and google scholar.

• H-Index Using Web of Science
• H-Index Using SCOPUS
• H-Index Using Google Scholar
• Video Tutorials
• Additional Resources

Subject Librarian

Please note: Of the resources discussed in this guide, Web of Science and SCOPUS are only available to current UTD students, staff and faculty. Google Scholar is available to everyone for free.  

What is an H-Index?

From Web of Science :

The h-index is indicated by an orange horizontal line going through the Year / Total Year columns. The number of items above this line, which is "h" have at least "h" citations. For example, an h-index of 20 means there are 20 items that have 20 citations or more. This metric is useful because it discounts the disproportionate weight of highly cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited. Calculating the h-index Value - The h-index factor is based on the depth of years of your product subscription and your selected timespan. Items that do not appear on the Results page will not be factored into the calculation. If your subscription depth is 10 years, then the h-index value is based on this depth even though a particular author may have published articles more than 10 years ago. Moreover, the calculation only includes items in your product - books and articles in non-covered journals are not included. 1. The h-index was developed by J.E. Hirsch and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (46): 16569-16572 November 15 2005.  

From Harzing.com :

The h-index is defined as follows:  

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 no more than h citations each.

It aims to measure the cumulative impact of a researcher’s output by looking at the amount of citations his/her work has received. Hirsch argues that the h-index is preferable to other single-number criteria, such as the total number of papers, the total number of citations and citations per paper. However, Hirsch provides a strong caveat:  

Obviously a single number can never give more than a rough approximation to an individual’s multifaceted profile, and many other factors should be considered in combination in evaluating an individual. This and the fact that there can always be exceptions to rules should be kept in mind especially in life-changing decision such as the granting or denying of tenure.

The advantage of the h-index is that it combines an assessment of both quantity (number of papers) and quality (impact, or citations to these papers) (Glänzel, 2006). An academic cannot have a high h-index without publishing a substantial number of papers. However, this is not enough. These papers need to be cited by other academics in order to count for the h-index.

As such the h-index is said to be preferable over the total number of citations as it corrects for “one hit wonders”, i.e. academics who might have authored (or co-authored) one or a limited number of highly-cited papers, but have not shown a sustained and durable academic performance. It is also preferable over the number of papers as it corrects for papers that are not cited. Hence the h-index favours academics that publish a continuous stream of papers with lasting and above-average impact. (Bornmann & Daniel, forth).

Advantages & Disadvantages

• Attempts to minimize the influence of the "one-hit wonder" or article that has been cited numerous times. One highly-cited article does not skew the author's metric.   
• At the same time, reduces the influence of having published numerous articles with few or no citations.  
• In other words, the h-index combines into a single number the quantity (total number of publications) and the quality (citation- based impact of those publications) of an author's output.

Disadvantages

• Narrow in scope - The h-index cannot be compared across disciplines or different subjects. For example, an h-index of 5 in the social sciences does not hold the same weight as a 5 in electrical engineering. An h-index can only be compared to other h-indexes within the same subject, which limits its value.  
• Does not consider the author's placement in the authors' list . In certain disciplines, placement in the authors' list is significant. The h-index does not account for that.  
• Self-citations can manipulate the h-index score . Some tools (e.g., SCOPUS) have a filter to exclude self-citations, while others do not and require manual filtering.  
• Limits the publication venues it considers mainly to journal articles and proceedings papers. To a much lesser extent are books or chapters in books considered. Alternative methods of publishing such as blogs and microblogs and "raw science" such as datasets and code are largely ignored by the h-index. H-index tends to work best for the STEM fields, and much less so for the social sciences and humanities (see Altmetrics ).  
• Considered a slow metric . H-index depends on citations to an author's works, which can take years. Newer authors who lack a large historical oeuvre from which to calculate an h-index do not benefit from it as a metric.
• Next: H-Index Using Web of Science >>
• Last Updated: Apr 16, 2024 3:25 PM
• URL: https://libguides.utdallas.edu/h-index-using-web-of-science-scopus-google-scholar

• Meet the Mentors
• Get Involved
• Get the T-Shirt
• Life Science Marketing
• Community Marketing
• Custom Marketing

Join Us Sign up for our feature-packed newsletter today to ensure you get the latest expert help and advice to level up your lab work.

• Genomics & Epigenetics
• DNA / RNA Manipulation and Analysis
• Protein Expression & Analysis
• PCR & Real-time PCR
• Flow Cytometry
• Microscopy & Imaging
• Cells and Model Organisms
• Analytical Chemistry and Chromatography Techniques
• Chemistry for Biologists
• Basic Lab Skills & Know-how
• Equipment Mastery & Hacks
• Managing the Scientific Literature
• Career Development and Networking
• Dealing with Fellow Scientists
• Getting Funded
• Lab Statistics & Math
• Organization & Productivity
• Personal Development
• PhD Survival
• Soft Skills & Tools
• Software & Online Tools
• Survive & Thrive
• Taming the Literature
• Writing, Publishing & Presenting
• Writing, Publishing and Presenting

What is the H-index, and Does it Matter?

How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? One way is the h-index. Discover what this is, and learn about the pros and cons of using it to assess your scientific career.

Published October 20, 2023

Nick has a PhD from the University Dundee and is the Founder and Director of Bitesize Bio , Science Squared Ltd and The Life Science Marketing Society .

The h-index is a measure of research performance and is calculated as the highest number of manuscripts from an author (h) that all have at least the same number (h) of citations. The h-index is known to penalize early career researchers and does not take into account the number of authors on a paper. Alternative indexes have been created, including the i-10, h-frac, G-index, and M-number.

Listen to one of our scientific editorial team members read this article. Click  here  to access more audio articles or subscribe.

How do you measure how good you are as a scientist? How would you compare the impact of two scientists in a field? What if you had to decide which one would get a grant? One method is the h-index, which we will discuss in more detail below. First, we’ll touch on why this is not a simple task.

Measuring scientific performance is more complicated and more critical than it might first seem. Various methods for measurement and comparison have been proposed, but none of them is perfect.

At first, you might think that the method for measuring scientific performance doesn’t concern you—because all you care about is doing the best research you can. However, you should care because these metrics are increasingly used by funding bodies and employers to allocate grants and jobs. So, your perceived scientific performance score could seriously affect your career.

Metrics for Measuring Scientific Performance

What are the metrics involved in measuring scientific performance? The methods that might first spring to mind are:

• Recommendations from peers. At first glance, this is a good idea in principle. However, it is subject to human nature, so personal relationships will inevitably affect perceived performance. Also, if a lesser-known scientist publishes a ground-breaking paper, they would likely get less recognition than if a more eminent colleague published the same paper.
• The number of articles published. A long publication list looks good on your CV, but the number of articles published does not indicate their impact on the field. Having a few publications well-heeded by colleagues in the field (i.e., they are cited often) is better than having a long list of publications cited poorly or not at all.
• The average number of citations per article published. So, if it’s citations we’re interested in, then surely the average number of citations per paper is a better number to look at. Well, not really. The average could be skewed dramatically by one highly cited article, so it does not allow a good comparison of overall performance.

The H-Index

In 2005, Jorge E. Hirsch of UCSD published a paper in PNAS in which he put forward the h-index as a metric for measuring and comparing the overall scientific productivity of individual scientists. [1]

The h-index has been quickly adopted as the metric of choice for many committees and bodies.

How to Calculate An Author’s H-Index

The h-index calculation is pretty simple. You plot the number of papers versus the number of citations you (or someone else) have received, and the h-index is the number of papers at which the 45-degree line (citations=papers, orange) intercepts the curve, as shown in Figure 1 . That is, h equals the number of papers that have received at least h citations. For example, do you have one publication that has been cited at least once? If the answer is yes, then you can go on to your next publication. Have your two publications each been cited at least twice? If yes, then your h-index is at least 2. You can keep going until you get to a “no.”

So, if you have an h-index of 20, you have 20 papers with at least 20 citations. It also means that you are doing pretty well with your science!

What is a Good H-Index?

Hirsch reckons that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional.

In his paper, Hirsch shows that successful scientists do, indeed, have high h-indices: 84% of Nobel Prize winners in physics, for example, had an h-index of at least 30. Table 1 lists some eminent scientists and their respective h-indexes.

Table 1: H-index scores of some Nobel Laureates (data from Google Scholar collected on September 27, 2023).

Advantages of the H-Index

The advantage of the h-index is that it combines productivity (i.e., number of papers produced) and impact (number of citations) in a single number. So, both productivity and impact are required for a high h-index; neither a few highly cited papers nor a long list of papers with only a handful of (or no!) citations will yield a high h-index.

Limitations of the H-Index

Although having a single number that measures scientific performance is attractive, the h-index is only a rough indicator of scientific performance and should only be considered as such.

Limitations of the h-index include the following:

• It does not take into account the number of authors on a paper. A scientist who is the sole author of a paper with 100 citations should get more credit than one on a similarly cited paper with 10 co-authors.
• It penalizes early-career scientists. Outstanding scientists with only a few publications cannot have a high h-index, even if all of those publications are ground-breaking and highly cited. For example, Albert Einstein would have had an h-index of only 4 or 5 if he had died in early 1906 despite being widely known as an influential physicist at the time.
• Review articles have a greater impact on the h-index than original papers since they are generally cited more often.
• The use of the h-index has now broadened beyond science. However, it’s difficult to compare fields and scientific disciplines directly, so, really, a ‘good’ h-index is impossible to define.

Calculating the H-Index

There are several online resources and h-index calculators for obtaining a scientist’s h-index. The most established are ISI Web of Knowledge, and Scopus, both of which require a subscription (probably via your institution), but there are free options too, one of which is Publish or Perish .

You might get a different value if you check your own (or someone else’s) h-index with each of these resources. Each uses a different database to count the total publications and citations. ISI and Scopus use their own databases, and Publish or Perish uses Google Scholar. Each database has different coverage and will provide varying h-index values. For example, ISI has good coverage of journal publications but poor coverage of conferences, while Scopus covers conferences better but needs better journal coverage pre-1992. [2]

Is the H-index Still Effective?

A paper published in PLoS One in 2021 concluded that while a scientist’s h-index previously correlated well with the number of scientific awards, this is no longer the case. This lack of correlation is partly because of the change in authorship patterns, with the average number of authors per paper increasing. [3]

Are Alternatives to the H-Index Better?

Let’s take a look at some of the alternative measures available.

The H-Frac Index

The authors of the PLoS One paper suggest fractional analogs of the h-index are better suited for the job. [3] Here, the number of authors on a paper is also considered. One such measure is the h-frac, where citation counts are divided by the number of authors. However, this solution could also be manipulated to the detriment of more junior researchers, as minimizing the number of authors on a paper would maximize your h-frac score. This could mean more junior researchers are left off papers where they did contribute, harming their careers. 

The G-Index

This measure looks at the most highly cited articles of an author and is defined as “the largest number n of highly cited articles for which the average number of citations is at least n .” [4] This measure allows highly cited papers to bolster lower cited papers of an author. 

The i-10 Index

Developed by Google Scholar, this index is the number of articles published by an author that have received at least 10 citations. This measure, along with the h-index, is available on Google Scholar.

The m-value was developed to try to balance the scales for early career researchers. It corrects the h-index for time, allowing for easier comparison of researchers with different seniority and career lengths. It is calculated as the h-index divided by the number of years.

The Problem with Measuring Performance

While these numbers can be helpful to give a flavor of a scientist’s performance, they are all flawed. Many are biased towards researchers who publish often and are further into their careers. Many of these indexes can also be manipulated, such as adding extra authors to papers who didn’t contribute.

In reality, it isn’t possible to distill a researcher’s contributions to a single number. They may not have published many papers, but those papers they have published made vital contributions. Or their skills are in training the next round of researchers. When looking at these numbers, we should remember they are just a reflection of one small part of a researcher’s contributions and values and are not the be-all and end-all.

The H-Index Summed Up

The h-index provides a useful metric for scientific performance, but only when viewed in the context of other factors. While other measures are available, including the i-10 index, the G-index, and the h-frac index, these also have limitations. Therefore, when making decisions that are important to you (funding, job, finding a PI), be sure to read through publication lists, talk to other scientists (and students) and peers, and take account of career stage. So, remember that an h-index is only one consideration among many—and you should definitely know your h-index—but it doesn’t define you (or anyone else) as a scientist.

• Hirsch JE. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output . PNAS 102(46):16569–72
• Meho LI, Yang K. (2007) Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar . JASIST 58(13):2105–25
• Koltun V, Hafner D. (2021) The h-index is no longer an effective correlate of scientific reputation . PLoS One . 16(6):e0253397
• Wikipedia. g-index . Accessed 25 September 2023

Originally published April 2, 2009. Reviewed and updated October 2023.

Share this article:

More 'Writing, Publishing and Presenting' articles

Scientific Cyber Fraud: Nobody Move—We’re Taking Over This Journal!

Keeping up to date with the scientific literature is a large part of the work-load of any researcher. Love it or loathe it, this means of sharing research findings with the larger scientific community is still the way in which most of us inform ourselves of the latest findings in our fields of research, or…

Build a CV You Can Be Proud Of – Part I: Communication Skills

They say scientists are highly skilled… and rightly so! While many people would think that we’re shy, retiring types who sit at our lab benches obsessing over teeny-weeny molecules, science (and particularly the process of obtaining a PhD) sets us up as highly skilled members of the workforce. I can hear you all groaning as…

Do’s and Don’ts of Writing a Cover Letter

A cover letter is a letter written to accompany a job application, a grant application, project reports, manuscripts, etc. that explains the purpose of your writing and incorporates certain key points of your application. It plays a decisive role in accomplishing the task it’s been written for, which is why it is so important to…

Getting to Know Your h-index

You’re applying for your first tenure-track position, and you’ve heard that your dream department uses something called the h-index to decide who will get interviews. It’s an increasingly common scenario: institutions are now regularly using the h-index to help make hiring and promotion decisions, especially when they have to screen many applicants. For that reason,…

Assertive Slide Titles to Guide Your Presentation

When I first learned how to design scientific presentations, I kept hearing the same advice from well-intentioned mentors: “Make sure your presentation tells a story!” they’d say. I understood what they meant in principle, but I had difficulty implementing this advice in my own presentations. In this article, I’m going to share a simple way…

How to Write Your Thesis Right

After years of hard work in the lab, having to sit down and write everything up can be a daunting and difficult task. Here are a few tips that I picked up during my thesis write-up that might help to make the process that little bit easier. Back up This is probably the advice most…

It seems doubtful whether all fields of research can be effectively measured in this way. I am a First World War historian. If I want to be cited a lot, I will write about very popular questions (masculinity, identity, space etc at the moment). If I go off into virgin territory and explore, for the first time ever, say, comparative studies of First World War popular music, I will get far fewer citations for a good while, and this may see, a strange reward for asking rarer questions. Whereas asking rare questions, in history, is a key skill (see Keith Thomas for example). This is one of the reasons that scholarly human sciences organizations in France where I live often refuse to use bibliometric indexes of this sort.

I’ve recently proposed a novel index for evaluation of individual researchers that does not depend on the number of publications, accounts for different co-author contributions and age of publications, and scales from 0.0 to 9.9 ( https://f1000research.com/articles/4-884 ). Moreover, it can be calculated with the help of freely available software. Please, share your thoughts on it. Would you use it along with the h-index, or maybe even instead of it, for evaluating your peers, potential collaborators or job applicants? If you’ve tried it on the people you know, do you find the results fair?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Become a better scientist in just 3 steps at a time.

Every week, our team condenses the best hard-won wisdom from our mentors’ webinars, podcasts, articles, eBooks, and more and delivers it directly to your inbox. 

Don’t delay! Sign up now

Newsletters

• Technical Skills
• More Skills
• Microscopy Focus
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Terms of Use

Copyright © Science Squared – all rights reserved

10 Things Every Molecular Biologist Should Know

The eBook with top tips from our Researcher community.

• Research Process
• Manuscript Preparation
• Manuscript Review
• Publication Process
• Publication Recognition
• Language Editing Services
• Translation Services

What is a Good H-index?

• 4 minute read
• 400.6K views

Table of Contents

You have finally overcome the exhausting process of a successful paper publication and are just thinking that it’s time to relax for a while. Maybe you are right to do so, but don’t take very long…you see, just like the research process itself, pursuing a career as an author of published works is also about expecting results. In other words, today there are tools that can tell you if your publication(s) is/are impacting the number of people you believed it would (or not). One of the most common tools researchers use is the H-index score.

Knowing how impactful your publications are among your audience is key to defining your individual performance as a researcher and author. This helps the scientific community compare professionals in the same research field (and career length). Although scoring intellectual activities is often an issue of debate, it also brings its own benefits:

• Inside the scientific community: A standardization of researchers’ performances can be useful for comparison between them, within their field of research. For example, H-index scores are commonly used in the recruitment processes for academic positions and taken into consideration when applying for academic or research grants. At the end of the day, the H-index is used as a sign of self-worth for scholars in almost every field of research.
• In an individual point of view: Knowing the impact of your work among the target audience is especially important in the academic world. With careful analysis and the right amount of reflection, the H-index can give you clues and ideas on how to design and implement future projects. If your paper is not being cited as much as you expected, try to find out what the problem might have been. For example, was the research content irrelevant for the audience? Was the selected journal wrong for your paper? Was the text poorly written? For the latter, consider Elsevier’s text editing and translation services in order to improve your chances of being cited by other authors and improving your H-index.

What is my H-index?

Basically, the H-index score is a standard scholarly metric in which the number of published papers, and the number of times their author is cited, is put into relation. The formula is based on the number of papers (H) that have been cited, and how often, compared to those that have not been cited (or cited as much). See the table below as a practical example:

In this case, the researcher scored an H-index of 6, since he has 6 publications that have been cited at least 6 times. The remaining articles, or those that have not yet reached 6 citations, are left aside.

A good H-index score depends not only on a prolific output but also on a large number of citations by other authors. It is important, therefore, that your research reaches a wide audience, preferably one to whom your topic is particularly interesting or relevant, in a clear, high-quality text. Young researchers and inexperienced scholars often look for articles that offer academic security by leaving no room for doubts or misinterpretations.

What is a good H-Index score journal?

Journals also have their own H-Index scores. Publishing in a high H-index journal maximizes your chances of being cited by other authors and, consequently, may improve your own personal H-index score. Some of the “giants” in the highest H-index scores are journals from top universities, like Oxford University, with the highest score being 146, according to Google Scholar.

Knowing the H-index score of journals of interest is useful when searching for the right one to publish your next paper. Even if you are just starting as an author, and you still don’t have your own H-index score, you may want to start in the right place to skyrocket your self-worth.

See below some of the most commonly used databases that help authors find their H-index values:

• Elsevier’s Scopus : Includes Citation Tracker, a feature that shows how often an author has been cited. To this day, it is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
• Clarivate Analytics Web of Science : a digital platform that provides the H-index with its Citation Reports feature
• Google Scholar : a growing database that calculates H-index scores for those who have a profile.

Maximize the impact of your research by publishing high-quality articles. A richly edited text with flawless grammar may be all you need to capture the eye of other authors and researchers in your field. With Elsevier, you have the guarantee of excellent output, no matter the topic or your target journal.

Language Editing Services by Elsevier Author Services:

What is a Corresponding Author?

Systematic Review VS Meta-Analysis

You may also like.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation of Your Research Paper

How to Submit a Paper for Publication in a Journal

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

How to decide where (in a thesis) a glossary should be positioned?

I want to include a glossary in my master’s thesis explaining some technical terms.

My university doesn't make any specifications about the usage or position of glossaries. So I'm asking myself:

• Is it better to put the glossary at the beginning of the thesis? (e.g. between the Table of Contents and the main content) That way the reader would see it first and either read it or keep in mind that he can look up unfamiliar terms there. But it would disrupt the reading flow between Abstract, Table of Contents and Content.
• Or would it be better to but the glossary in the appendix? Maybe with footnotes refering to it, each time a new term is used for the first time.

The current structure of the thesis is:

• writing-style

5 Answers 5

It is utterly a matter of style. Just put it where it makes more sense to you. If you expect people actually NEED to read it before they can read your thesis, just put it in front. Otherwise, put it after the main text.

• If somebody needs to read the glossary highly depends on the reader. My professor might need it. I'm only wondering if it might disrupt the flow of reading to much. –  Kaadzia Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 23:21
• 2 My thesis had a list of abbreviations and acronyms that came as part of the front matter. It was easier to define all of those things once at the beginning in the same place rather than worry if I need to redefine HMQC in chapter 4, when it hasn't been used since chapter 1. –  Ben Norris Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 14:46
• 1 In another guideline of my university (one about assignments in general) I just now found the instruction to put the glossary before the main text. So in my case the decision to have it at the front was the right one. –  Kaadzia Commented Jan 12, 2013 at 14:07

I suggest to follow the order reported on Wikipedia – Book design .

Here is the suggested order (skip all that is not needed in your thesis; colophons are only needed in published works, and your publisher will take care of them):

• acknowledgment
• introduction
• content – optionally divided into volumes, books, parts, chapters, sections
• bibliography

• 4 Could you reproduce the essence of the wiki page here, this makes your post selfcontained, and not dependend on a non StackExchange external website. –  Paul Hiemstra Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 19:15
• 2 I'm not sure if the wikipedia article on Book design in general is the perfect match for a thesis. Reading a piece of fiction like "Lord of the Rings" which is mentioned as instructive example in the article, is a whole different way of reading than reading a scientific work. So the best order of the contents might be different, too. –  Kaadzia Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 23:17
• 1 Good point. That list seems to be tailored to all kinds of publications, though: most works of fiction do not need a glossary, a bibliography and an index, so I would say that the authors had at least both fiction and non-fiction in mind. (that said, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that LotR contains all of them). –  Federico Poloni Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 12:52
• One element very specific to some kinds of academic theses are the included papers. Do they go all the way at the end of the back matter? What about the lists of papers, somewhere in the front matter? Would be nice to have a list more geared to this. –  gerrit Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 15:04
• @gerrit List of papers included in the thesis should be either a part of Introduction, or go directly before it. If you include a "carbon-copy" of all the pepers in the thesis, I suggest putting them after everything else. They form a completely non-intergal part of the thesis, they have their own title, list of authors, references etc. –  yo' Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 14:24

Put the glossary after any appendices and before the index .

EDIT: This advice is simply based on a very quick survey of the textbooks that I had close to hand. The sample size is therefore small, possibly subject biased (physics, mathematics, astronomy, economics), and therefore subject to argument. Thanks to aeismail for the comment prompting this edit.

• 4 Just curious—is there a specific reason why it should be there? –  aeismail Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 18:43
• 3 Aside from any over-riding requirements set by a departmental style guide (and we're told that there is none in this case), placing the glossary at the end of the document in general seems to correspond with the trend that I see in the textbooks that I use. Conformity with established trends isn't necessarily a good thing, I realise. –  Nicholas Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 12:51
• You should put that in your answer (I should have mentioned that in my original comment; the goal was to avoid a "quick-fire" answer that doesn't explain things to future readers). –  aeismail Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 13:44
• 1 Nicholas, if I understand you correctly the reason for your advice is, that most people do it that way. Is that what you meant? –  Kaadzia Commented Dec 3, 2012 at 15:01
• 1 @Karin: Yes, but see the qualification that I included in my edit. –  Nicholas Commented Dec 4, 2012 at 9:20

The other answers already contain the conclusions of my answer. However, I'll try to give some reasoning behind.

Glossary, Nomenclature, List of Symbols, Index, References, etc. -- all these are indexes , and should go to the backmatter.

Table of Contents, List of Figures, etc. -- these specify the contents , and should go to the frontmatter.

The difference is that indexes are have in general logical sorting of some type (alphabetical or other), whereas the contents strictly reflect the order of the text in the document.

As for the order of them: the more used they are, the farer away from the mainmatter they go (i.e. first in frontmatter and last in backmatter). This depends a lot on your reader. The reason for this is that the closer to the cover they are, the easier it is to reach them. In general, the most used index in a thesis are the references, so they go last. In textbooks, the General index goes last, since it's more interesting for the reader.

The rule above is, on the other hand, less important than the fact that Title, half-title, dedication, preface and colophon have priority, and are obviously the outer-most elements of the work.

So, in the end, you might get to this order:

In the end, none of these rules is very strict.

• 1 Interesting reasoning. Especially the part the closer to the cover, the easier to reach . Personally I wouldn't feel to comfortable putting something like the list of figures or list of tables before the main content. I don't want to force all readers to thumb through something they might not need, before they can start reading. –  Kaadzia Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 14:40
• @kdzia The point is: How many people are actually going to read the thesis from the very beginning to the very end? Not many I think, and each of them will need to find Chapter 1 exactly once (when they start reading). So it doesn't matter whether you have two or three more sheets of paper before the actual Chapter 1 or not. –  yo' Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 14:46
• I think it does matter. If the majority of the readers are interested in reading the titlepage, the abstract, the TOC and in skimming through the chapters, the thesis should be optimized for that. The few who want to read the table of images and table of tables before the main content will have to go to the backmatter for that. –  Kaadzia Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 9:57

A glossary in the front before the main body has less context and disrupts the flow -- people want to read the body, not get to a list of definitions first. I attended an editorial seminar once and the instructors recounted anecdotes of leading tech companies who requested user studies on content placement like LOT, LOF, TOC, glossaries, and so on. The verdict: Just give me the content first and make it lean.

• Thanks Chris. Do you happen to have any references to the user studies you're mentioning? That would be very interresting. –  Kaadzia Commented Mar 1, 2018 at 16:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged thesis writing-style glossary ..

• Featured on Meta
• Announcing a change to the data-dump process
• Upcoming initiatives on Stack Overflow and across the Stack Exchange network...

Hot Network Questions

• Can a car dealership reverse a car sale if the lending company removes their approval after the sale?
• Add three lines to make a Capital City
• Three up to 800 & sum to 2048
• One doubt about Dirac notation
• Finding the smallest perfect square whose last 3 digits are the same. How do I do this by hand?
• User safety when touching tone controls in vacuum tube preamplifier
• Your internet connection cannot be shared because it is protected by 802.1X
• Airshow pilots not making radio calls - best course of action
• US visa for EU residency card holders
• Get GNU tar PID inside of --to-command
• How to convert a three-plane equation into a line?
• What exactly is code and how does it relate to law? Where does it fit into the hierarchy of law?
• Do I have legal grounds against a book by an ex which depicts private details of my life, including some false events, without permission?
• Is there content difference between Exalted Third Edition, Exalted Third Edition Deluxe and Exalted Third Edition Ultra Deluxe?
• Short story where only women are able to do intergalactic travel
• What exactly did the BBC mean by teletext?
• Why is "hidden dependency" (required things not in parameter list directly) a disadvantage of "global variables", but not in "preserve whole object"?
• What would a planet need to have a sustained blood-based water cycle?
• The answer is in the middle
• Windows 11 erases GRUB data making booting into Linux painful
• Are elements above 137 possible?
• Did the BBC ask for extra line spacing?
• How Does Our Current Understanding of QFT Affect Chemistry and Biology?
• Why does disk management see an external USB SSD, but also says it is offline?

• Resources Research Proposals --> Industrial Updates Webinar - Research Meet
• Countries-Served
• Add-on-services

Text particle

feel free to change the value of the variable "message"

What are h-index and i10-index

Introduction

• The h-index is short for the Hirsch index – Jorge E. Hirsch (2005).
• It’s a metric at the author level that tries to measure both the productivity and citation impact of a scientist’s or scholar’s publications .

Calculating and Metric

• The h-index is simply a count of the largest number of papers (h) from a journal or author that have at least (h) number of citations.
• It arranges a researcher’s published articles from highest to lowest citation count.
• It marks the point where citations equal or exceed the paper’s rank
•  Although the h-index varies per discipline, it allows  comparison within comparable fields.

Increasing Your h-index

•  To increase the h-index, one must publish papers of high quality.
• The researcher should ensure that he/she has not published any article in predatory/fake journals.
• Researchers should make sure they have not published any articles in predatory or fake journals.
• However, publishing more review articles may result in more citations, ultimately increasing a profile’s h-index.

Evaluating Academic Careers

• The h-index is used for assessing academic careers, particularly hiring and promotion decisions, and to compare scholars in the same field.
• Academic institutions and funding bodies use it to assess scholars for promotions, tenure, and grants.

Example for Calculation

•  For example, an h-index of 17 means the scientist has published at least 17 papers, each cited at least 17 times.
• The scientist’s h-index remains 17 if their 18th most cited paper has only 10 citations.
• However, if the 18th most cited paper was cited 18 or more times, the h-index would increase to 18.

Introduction to the i10-index

•  Google Scholar introduced the i10-index in 2011

Simple and Straightforward Indexing

• It’s a basic index. Just count how many papers in a journal have 10 citations or more.
• The 10-citation benchmark is easy to grasp and sets a clear standard for what qualifies as a well-cited paper.

Complementing Other Metrics

• It works well with other measures like the h-index, giving more details about a researcher’s productivity and influence.
• The i10 index also boosts the value of any student’s profile.

Calculation and Accessibility

• The main advantage of the i10 index is that it can be calculated very easily.
• Google Scholar provides easy and free access to these metrics.

Indication of Quality Work

• A higher i10-index means consistently producing great work, which is crucial for success.
• Connecting with Google Scholar makes it easier to access and use for academic and research assessments.

Example of i10-index Calculation

• An i-10 index of 25 indicates that for every 25 articles published, the researcher has received at least 10 citations.
• This index varies among researchers, mainly based on their research subject and sub-sections.

Source: Click

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Indian J Orthop
• v.50(5); 2016 Sep

What is indexing?

B v murlimanju.

Department of Anatomy, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, Mangalore, Karnataka, India

Latha V Prabhu

M d prameela, mangala m pai, vasudha v saralaya.

We read with great interest the editorial article titled “What is indexing.” 1 This is such an important article which provides the reply to the questions, what are indexed articles? And how to differentiate indexed journals from those of nonindexed. It has been very hard to answer these questions. Getting the research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is the best of academic assessment, and communication of research findings is possible with the publication. 2 It is important to publish the articles in journals which are indexed by reputed databases such as PubMed/Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science. The journals which are indexed by Web of Science/Science Citation Index Expanded will have the impact factor which is given by Thomson Reuters. The Medical Council of India insists the teachers to publish in the journals which have these indexing. We should be happy with this initiative from the Medical Council India. Earlier, the teachers published their papers in predatory journals. A journal becomes “predatory” if it involves an illegitimate publication process which lacks the basic standards and publication ethics. 3 The predatory journals may publish the articles with no peer review process and convert it online as given by the author after receiving the publication fee. This becomes unethical practice as the authors may cook up some writing, manipulate the data, and publish. It has been reported that the authors who publish in predatory journals have got limited publishing experience, and they come from developing countries. 4 India is one among the nations where the predatory publications are high. Xia et al ., 4 after their study on publications based on pharmacology journals reported that India tops the predatory publications followed by Nigeria and Pakistan. Another study by Shen and Björk 5 reported that 35% of authors in the predatory journal publication come from Asia, followed by Africa (8%) and the USA (6%). It is a relief that the damage caused by the predatory journals is regional and limited. It has been opined that such publications will decrease in the future. 5 However, it is surprising to know that few journals indexed by the reputed databases such as Scopus, Medline, and Web of Science are involved in predatory scientific publications. Djuric 6 reports that the people in Serbia want to publish their research in a journal which has an ISI impact factor. This is mandatory from their government to accomplish an academic appointment and to obtain a PhD. Unfortunately, some local publishers in Serbia have managed to bribe the indexing agencies and get their journals indexed by Web of Science along with an impact factor from the Thomson Reuter. Djuric 6 also says that he sent a flawed manuscript to one such journal purposefully and he was shocked to have got an acceptance letter very next day. The acceptance letter had an invoice and instruction on how to pay the article processing charge. Lukić et al . 7 reported about “hijacked” journals, in which hijackers create websites which got similar names as the reputed journals and then ask for papers through phishing E-mails.

Beall's list of the predatory journal provides the authors to know about the publishers and journals which are into this unethical practice. Our sincere thanks are there to Jeffrey Beall, Associate Professor and Librarian, University of Colorado Denver, the USA for taking this effort. Beall updates his list of predatory journals every academic year. We had confusion about the terms Medline/PubMed/Index Medicus/MEDLAR. The authors have clarified the exact meaning of these terms. Now, it is clear that the “PubMed” is just the website, and indexing is actually from the “Medline.” We do agree that the publication in PubMed confers quality publication and Scopus provides H-index, 8 which will offer the impact of our publication. We are happy to know that our “Indian Citation Index” is emerging. 1

We thank and also congratulate the authors for writing this concept.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

R EFERENCES

How to make an index for your book or dissertation

Dear Readers. Shaun Lehmann, Katherine Firth (of the Research Voodoo blog ) and I are currently in the process of writing a new book for Open University Press called ‘Writing Trouble’. ‘Writing Trouble’ will help you diagnose and treat your thesis writing problems.

The proposed book evolved out of our work on the Thesis Bootcamp program , a writing intervention originally designed by Peta Freestone and Liam Connell . Over the years all of us have been running our own bootcamps we have met hundreds of students struggling to put their final thesis draft together. These students have supervisors who are clearly great researchers, but cannot give good feedback on writing. The book works backwards from the confusing feedback students have showed us.

Part of our process with this new book is to test out some of our text on our audience – you. Here is part of another chapter from our section “Where’s your discussion section?” where we deal with the purpose of the conventional ‘bits’ of a thesis and how to treat them. This piece of writing on indexing relates to a previous piece I wrote on the Whisperer about how to do a glossary . It’s the first draft, so your feedback is appreciated!

If you’d like to know more about the book before it’s published, you can sign up for our writing trouble mailing list .

The index is the elder sibling of the glossary , who has grown up, moved to the big city and started doing drugs. Anyone who has been asked to write one will tremble a little in their boots, at least the first time. Basically, an index is a quick look up list of terms that appear in your dissertation or book. In a similar way to the glossary, an index serves a rhetorical as well as a communicative role by throwing a spotlight on the parts of your book that will be most interesting and useful to the reader.

Indexing is an even more labourious process than making a glossary, but the return on investment is definitely worth it. Beyond the academic examination context, a good index is a vital tool in convincing a reader whether or not to read (or buy) your book. How often have you flipped to the index of the book to see if there’s enough on the topic you are interested in to warrant the effort? That’s right – almost every time.

Until this book, only Inger had experience of writing an index and she did a pretty horrible job of it. Here is what she learned.

Step one: Develop some useful themes

To begin, you need to think about why a reader might want to buy or read your book in the first place. You are not writing a novel, so being practical is not a bad place to start. As a thought exercise, try to think about the kind of problems that your readers are looking to solve. Think of words or phrases to represent these problems and you have a rough list of themes.

Inger’s previous book “How to be an academic” was a practical guide to surviving in academia, especially if you are a precariously employed academic. She started by generating a list of things like “making money”, “dealing with assholes”, “writing quickly” and so on. She then tried to think about the themes she thought were important, to give the index reader a sense of the broad range of topics in the book. This generated terms like “networking”. These themes guided the next step: identifying the areas of text where these themes were discussed.

Step Two: find the chunks of text that relate to the themes

The next step is the absolute worst part of the whole process, so prepare yourself. To get to a list-y looking thing, one must read a text that one is incredibly sick of reading by now with a forensic eye. The purpose of this step is to take note of the various manifestations of your themes in the book and make a note of their location. DO NOT DO THIS STEP UNTIL YOU HAVE PRINTER READY TEXT OR YOUR PAGE NUMBERS WILL BE WRONG.

Each time you find that theme in chunk of text, think about a short word or phrase that might relate to that theme and note the page number. Inger’s first pass looked something like this:

Acronyms, value of                                         124 – 125

Arrogance                                                       50 – 55

‘Backstage work’                                            226, 236

Bookshelves                                                    306

Cleverness                                                       46, 49, 250 – 251, 255 – 257

Cultural Capital                                               46 – 47, 89 – 90, 245

Dinner Parties                                                 56, 60, 64

Competition                                                    260

Fashion                                                            85 – 90, 306

Gift economies                                                253 – 254

Hiring practices                                               62, 229 – 236

Love of the work                                             18, 76, 264, 288 – 291

Migrants                                                         56 – 60

Salaries                                                           31, 222

‘service’                                                           101

The new normal                                              39, 229, 231

Academia as a Bad Boyfriend                                           16 – 19, 32 – 33, 36, 231

Academic journals, questionable practices of                  156 – 162

Academic hunger games                                                   13, 229

ADHD                                                                                67

Amabile, Tessa                                                                  46

Aaron, Rachael                                                                  198

Architecture as a profession                                             28, 218

Baby Boomers                                                                   283

Becker, Howard                                                                125, 153 – 154, 193, 195 – 196

Bullying                                                                             52, 54 – 55

Blogging and social media

The purpose of the Thesis Whisperer blog     9

Time implications of blogging                         12, 177

Starting blogging                                            22

Mark’s simple rules of blogging                     38

Safe Spaces?                                                   48, 267

Writing posts                                                  82, 263 – 264

Value of sharing for your career                    112, 220, 303 – 304

As open access publishing                               154, 159, 220 – 222

Enjoyment                                                       256, 263

Mainstream media shit storms                      268 – 269

Social media shit storm                                  284 – 285

At a certain point in making this list, Inger gave up trying to keep it tidy and started using Nvivo, a text analysis software. This worked well, but she doesn’t recommend using this software unless you have the skills; there’s a big learning curve and you have a book to deliver.

Step Three: throw out the themes

When Inger’s publisher got this index, carefully compiled over a couple of weekends, she smiled kindly, thanked Inger for the effort and gave it straight to a professional. When it came back, it looked completely different. In Inger’s version, dinner parties appeared under the theme of ‘academic’: a vague sort of category, in the final version it appeared under D, you know – for dinner party.

The lesson? When you are generating an alphabetical list, it’s best to bear in mind the alphabet. Inger was close, she just needed to throw away the themes and arrange the list of key words in alphabetical order. The final touch would be to try to think of words that are related to each other and put “see also” under them.

Job done, no drugs necessary. Except, maybe – coffee.

This is how I did an index, but I’m sure there are more elegant and sophisticated techniques. Have you ever done one? Do you have tricks to share? Love to hear about them in the comments!

Related posts

Sign up for the ‘writing trouble’ book news mailing list.

Buy “How to be an academic”

Enter the Glossators

Other ‘first draft’ posts from the Writing Trouble Series

The vagueness problem in academic writing

Academia is a passive agressive, middle class dinner party

Your thesis is the map, not the journey

Love the Thesis whisperer and want it to continue? Consider becoming a $1 a month Patreon and get special, Patreon only, extra Thesiswhisperer content every two weeks!

Share this:

The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

• Post (608)
• Page (16)
• Product (6)
• Getting things done (259)
• On Writing (139)
• Miscellany (138)
• Your Career (113)
• You and your supervisor (66)
• Writing (48)
• productivity (23)
• consulting (13)
• TWC (13)
• supervision (12)
• 2024 (7)
• 2023 (12)
• 2022 (11)
• 2021 (15)
• 2020 (22)

Whisper to me....

Enter your email address to get posts by email.

Email Address

Sign me up!

• On the reg: a podcast with @jasondowns
• Thesis Whisperer on Facebook
• Thesis Whisperer on Instagram
• Thesis Whisperer on Soundcloud
• Thesis Whisperer on Youtube
• Thesiswhisperer on Mastodon
• Thesiswhisperer page on LinkedIn
• Thesiswhisperer Podcast
• 12,179,236 hits

Discover more from The Thesis Whisperer

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation
• Dissertation Table of Contents in Word | Instructions & Examples

Dissertation Table of Contents in Word | Instructions & Examples

Published on May 15, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

The table of contents is where you list the chapters and major sections of your thesis, dissertation , or research paper, alongside their page numbers. A clear and well-formatted table of contents is essential, as it demonstrates to your reader that a quality paper will follow.

The table of contents (TOC) should be placed between the abstract and the introduction . The maximum length should be two pages. Depending on the nature of your thesis , paper, or dissertation topic , there are a few formatting options you can choose from.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What to include in your table of contents, what not to include in your table of contents, creating a table of contents in microsoft word, table of contents examples, updating a table of contents in microsoft word, other lists in your thesis, dissertation, or research paper, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the table of contents.

Depending on the length of your document, you can choose between a single-level, subdivided, or multi-level table of contents.

• A single-level table of contents only includes “level 1” headings , or chapters. This is the simplest option, but it may be too broad for a long document like a dissertation.
• A subdivided table of contents includes chapters as well as “level 2” headings, or sections. These show your reader what each chapter contains.
• A multi-level table of contents also further divides sections into “level 3” headings. This option can get messy quickly, so proceed with caution. Remember your table of contents should not be longer than 2 pages. A multi-level table is often a good choice for a shorter document like a research paper .

Examples of level 1 headings are Introduction, Literature Review , Methodology , and Bibliography. Subsections of each of these would be level 2 headings, further describing the contents of each chapter or large section. Any further subsections would be level 3.

In these introductory sections, less is often more. As you decide which sections to include, narrow it down to only the most essential.

Including appendices and tables

You should include all appendices in your table of contents. Whether or not you include tables and figures depends largely on how many there are in your document.

If there are more than three figures and tables, you might consider listing them on a separate page. Otherwise, you can include each one in the table of contents.

• Theses and dissertations often have a separate list of figures and tables.
• Research papers generally don’t have a separate list of figures and tables.

Don't submit your assignments before you do this

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students. Free citation check included.

Try for free

All level 1 and level 2 headings should be included in your table of contents, with level 3 headings used very sparingly.

The following things should never be included in a table of contents:

• Your acknowledgements page
• Your abstract
• The table of contents itself

The acknowledgements and abstract always precede the table of contents, so there’s no need to include them. This goes for any sections that precede the table of contents.

To automatically insert a table of contents in Microsoft Word, be sure to first apply the correct heading styles throughout the document, as shown below.

• Choose which headings are heading 1 and which are heading 2 (or 3)!
• For example, if all level 1 headings should be Times New Roman, 12-point font, and bold, add this formatting to the first level 1 heading.
• Highlight the level 1 heading.
• Right-click the style that says “Heading 1.”
• Select “Update Heading 1 to Match Selection.”
• Allocate the formatting for each heading throughout your document by highlighting the heading in question and clicking the style you wish to apply.

Once that’s all set, follow these steps:

• Add a title to your table of contents. Be sure to check if your citation style or university has guidelines for this.
• Place your cursor where you would like your table of contents to go.
• In the “References” section at the top, locate the Table of Contents group.
• Here, you can select which levels of headings you would like to include. You can also make manual adjustments to each level by clicking the Modify button.
• When you are ready to insert the table of contents, click “OK” and it will be automatically generated, as shown below.

The key features of a table of contents are:

• Clear headings and subheadings
• Corresponding page numbers

Check with your educational institution to see if they have any specific formatting or design requirements.

Write yourself a reminder to update your table of contents as one of your final tasks before submitting your dissertation or paper. It’s normal for your text to shift a bit as you input your final edits, and it’s crucial that your page numbers correspond correctly.

It’s easy to update your page numbers automatically in Microsoft Word. Simply right-click the table of contents and select “Update Field.” You can choose either to update page numbers only or to update all information in your table of contents.

In addition to a table of contents, you might also want to include a list of figures and tables, a list of abbreviations, and a glossary in your thesis or dissertation. You can use the following guides to do so:

• List of figures and tables
• List of abbreviations

It is less common to include these lists in a research paper.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

• Anchoring bias
• Halo effect
• The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
• The placebo effect
• Nonresponse bias
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

All level 1 and 2 headings should be included in your table of contents . That means the titles of your chapters and the main sections within them.

The contents should also include all appendices and the lists of tables and figures, if applicable, as well as your reference list .

Do not include the acknowledgements or abstract in the table of contents.

To automatically insert a table of contents in Microsoft Word, follow these steps:

• Apply heading styles throughout the document.
• In the references section in the ribbon, locate the Table of Contents group.
• Click the arrow next to the Table of Contents icon and select Custom Table of Contents.
• Select which levels of headings you would like to include in the table of contents.

Make sure to update your table of contents if you move text or change headings. To update, simply right click and select Update Field.

The table of contents in a thesis or dissertation always goes between your abstract and your introduction .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, July 18). Dissertation Table of Contents in Word | Instructions & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved July 30, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/table-of-contents/

Is this article helpful?

Tegan George

Other students also liked, how to write an abstract | steps & examples, how to write a thesis or dissertation introduction, how to write effective headings, what is your plagiarism score.

The Differences Between Indexes and Scales

Definitions, Similarities, and Differences

• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Key Concepts
• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology

Indexes and scales are important and useful tools in social science research. They have both similarities and differences among them. An index is a way of compiling one score from a variety of questions or statements that represents a belief, feeling, or attitude. Scales, on the other hand, measure levels of intensity at the variable level, like how much a person agrees or disagrees with a particular statement.

If you are conducting a social science research project, chances are good that you will encounter indexes and scales. If you are creating your own survey or using secondary data from another researcher’s survey, indexes and scales are almost guaranteed to be included in the data.

Indexes in Research

Indexes are very useful in quantitative social science research because they provide a researcher a way to create a composite measure that summarizes responses for multiple rank-ordered related questions or statements. In doing so, this composite measure gives the researcher data about a research participant's view on a certain belief, attitude, or experience.

For example, let’s say a researcher is interested in measuring job satisfaction and one of the key variables is job-related depression. This might be difficult to measure with simply one question. Instead, the researcher can create several different questions that deal with job-related depression and create an index of the included variables. To do this, one could use four questions to measure job-related depression, each with the response choices of "yes" or "no":

• "When I think about myself and my job, I feel downhearted and blue."
• "When I’m at work, I often get tired for no reason."
• "When I’m at work, I often find myself restless and can’t keep still."
• "When at work, I am more irritable than usual."

To create an index of job-related depression, the researcher would simply add up the number of "yes" responses for the four questions above. For example, if a respondent answered "yes" to three of the four questions, his or her index score would be three, meaning that job-related depression is high. If a respondent answered no to all four questions, his or her job-related depression score would be 0, indicating that he or she is not depressed in relation to work.

Scales in Research

A scale is a type of composite measure that is composed of several items that have a logical or empirical structure among them. In other words, scales take advantage of differences in intensity among the indicators of a variable. The most commonly used scale is the Likert scale , which contains response categories such as "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," and "strongly disagree." Other scales used in social science research include the Thurstone scale, Guttman scale, Bogardus social distance scale, and the semantic differential scale.

For example, a researcher interested in measuring prejudice against women could use a Likert scale to do so. The researcher would first create a series of statements reflecting prejudiced ideas, each with the response categories of "strongly agree," "agree," "neither agree nor disagree," "disagree," and "strongly disagree." One of the items might be "women shouldn’t be allowed to vote," while another might be "women can’t drive as well as men." We would then assign each of the response categories a score of 0 to 4 (0 for "strongly disagree," 1 for "disagree," 2 for "neither agree or disagree," etc.). The scores for each of the statements would then be added for each respondent to create an overall score of prejudice. If a respondent answered "strongly agree" to five statements expressing prejudiced ideas, his or her overall prejudice score would be 20, indicating a very high degree of prejudice against women.

Compare and Contrast

Scales and indexes have several similarities. First, they are both ordinal measures of variables. That is, they both rank-order the units of analysis in terms of specific variables. For example, a person’s score on either a scale or index of religiosity gives an indication of his or her religiosity relative to other people. Both scales and indexes are composite measures of variables, meaning that the measurements are based on more than one data item. For instance, a person’s IQ score is determined by his or her responses to many test questions, not simply one question.

Even though scales and indexes are similar in many ways, they also have several differences. First, they are constructed differently. An index is constructed simply by accumulating the scores assigned to individual items. For example, we might measure religiosity by adding up the number of religious events the respondent engages in during an average month.

A scale, on the other hand, is constructed by assigning scores to patterns of responses with the idea that some items suggest a weak degree of the variable while other items reflect stronger degrees of the variable. For example, if we are constructing a scale of political activism, we might score "running for office" higher than simply "voting in the last election." "Contributing money to a political campaign " and "working on a political campaign" would likely score in between. We would then add up the scores for each individual based on how many items they participated in and then assign them an overall score for the scale.

Updated by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

• Scales Used in Social Science Research
• How to Construct an Index for Research
• Likert Scale: What Is It and How to Use It?
• Constructing a Questionnaire
• Difference Between Independent and Dependent Variables
• Examples of Independent and Dependent Variables
• Engage Students With a Four Corners Debate
• 13 Creative Examples of Informal Assessments for the Classroom
• The Meaning of Reliability in Sociology
• Pros and Cons of Secondary Data Analysis
• Conversation Lesson: Points of View
• Cluster Analysis and How Its Used in Research
• Understanding Validity in Sociology
• What Is Naturalistic Observation? Definition and Examples
• Gender Schema Theory Explained
• What Is a Dependent Variable?

What Is a Journal Index, and Why is Indexation Important?

• Research Process
• Peer Review

A journal index, or a list of journals organized by discipline, subject, region and other factors, can be used by other researchers to search for studies and data on certain topics. As an author, publishing your research in an indexed journal increases the credibility and visibility of your work. Here we help you to understand journal indexing better - as well as benefit from it.

Updated on May 13, 2022

A journal index, also called a ‘bibliographic index' or ‘bibliographic database', is a list of journals organized by discipline, subject, region or other factors.

Journal indexes can be used to search for studies and data on certain topics. Both scholars and the general public can search journal indexes.

Journals in indexes have been reviewed to ensure they meet certain criteria. These criteria may include:

• Ethics and peer review policies
• Assessment criteria for submitted articles
• Editorial board transparency

What is a journal index?

Indexed journals are important, because they are often considered to be of higher scientific quality than non-indexed journals. You should aim for publication in an indexed journal for this reason. AJE's Journal Guide journal selection tool can help you find one.

Journal indexes are created by different organizations, such as:

• Public bodies- For example, PubMed is maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine. PubMed is the largest index for biomedical publications.
• Analytic companies- For example: the Web of Science Core Collection is maintained by Clarivate Analytics. The WOS Core Collection includes journals indexed in the following sub-indexes: (1) Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE); (2) Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI); (3) Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI); (4) Emerging Sources Citation Index.
• Publishers- For example, Scopus is owned by Elsevier and maintained by the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board . Scopus includes journals in all disciplines, but the majority are science and technology journals.

Key types of journal indexes

You can choose from a range of journal indexes. Some are broad and are considered “general indexes”. Others are specific to certain fields and are considered “specialized indexes”.

For example:

• The Science Citation Index Expanded includes mostly science and technology journals
• The Arts & Humanities Citation Index includes mostly arts and humanities journals
• PubMed includes mostly biomedical journals
• The Emerging Sources Citation Index includes journals in all disciplines

Which index you choose will depend on your research subject area.

Some indexes, such as Web of Science , include journals from many countries. Others, such as the Chinese Academy of Science indexing system , are specific to certain countries or regions.

Choosing the type of index may depend on factors such as university or grant requirements.

Some indexes are open to the public, while others require a subscription. Many people searching for research papers will start with free search engines, such as Google Scholar , or free journal indexes, such as the Web of Science Master Journal List . Publishing in a journal in one or more free indexes increases the chance of your article being seen.

Journals in subscription-based indexes are generally considered high-quality journals. If the status of the journal is important, choose a journal in one or more subscription-based indexes.

Most journals belong to more than one index. To improve the visibility and impact of your article, choose a journal featured in multiple indexes.

How does journal indexing work?

All journals are checked for certain criteria before being added to an index. Each index has its own set of rules, but basic publishing standards include the following:

• An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). ISSNs are unique to each journal and indicate that the journal publishes issues on a recurring basis.
• An established publishing schedule.
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) . DOIs are unique letter/number codes assigned to digital objects. The benefit of a DOI is that it will never change, unlike a website link.
• Copyright requirements. A copyright policy helps protect your work and outlines the rules for the use or sharing of your work, whether it's copyrighted or has some form of creative commons licensing .
• Other requirements can include conflict of interest statements, ethical approval statements, an editorial board listed on the website, and published peer review policies.

To be included in an index, a journal must submit an application and undergo an audit by the indexation board. Index board members (called auditors) will confirm certain information, such as the full listing of the editorial board on the website, the inclusion of ethics statements in published articles, established appeal and retraction processes, and more.

Why is journal indexing important?

As an author, publishing your research in an indexed journal increases the credibility and visibility of your work. Indexed journals are generally considered to be of higher scientific quality than non-indexed journals.

With the growth of fully open access journals and online-only journals, recognizing “predatory” journals and their publishers has become difficult. Indexing a journal in one or more well-known databases is a good sign the journal is credible.

Moreover, more and more institutions are requiring publication in an indexed journal as a requirement for graduation, promotion, or grant funding.

As an author, it is important to ensure that your research is seen by as many eyes as possible. Index databases are often the first places scholars and the public will search for specific information. Publishing a paper in a non-indexed journal could be harmful in this context.

However, there are some exceptions, such as medical case reports.

Many journals don't accept medical case reports because they don't have high citation rates. However, several primary and secondary journals have been created specifically for case reports. Examples include the primary journal, BMC Medical Case Reports, and the secondary journal, European Heart Journal - Case Reports.

While many of these journals are indexed, they may not be indexed in the major indexes, though they are still highly acceptable journals.

Open access and indexation

With the recent increase in open access publishing, many journals have started offering an open access option. Other journals are completely open access, meaning they do not offer a traditional subscription service.

Open access journals have many benefits, such as:

• High visibility. Anyone can access and read your paper.
• Publication speed. It is generally quicker to post an article online than to publish it in a traditional journal format.

Identifying credible open access journals

Open access has made it easier for predatory journal publishers to attract unsuspecting or new authors. These predatory journal publishers often publish any article for a fee without peer review and with questionable ethical and copyright policies. Here we show you eight ways to spot predatory open access journals .

One way to identify credible open access journals is their index status. However, be aware that some predatory journals will falsely list indexes or display logos on their website. It is good practice to make sure the journal is indexed on the index's website before submitting your article to that journal.

Major journal indexing services

There are several journal indexes out there. Some of the most popular indexes are as follows:

Life Sciences and Hard Sciences

• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) Master Journal List
• Engineering Index
• Web of Science (now published by Clarivate Analytics, formerly by ISI and Thomson Reuters)
• Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

Humanities and Social Sciences

• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) Master Journal List
• Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) Master Journal List

Indexation and impact factors

It is easy to assume that indexed journals will have higher impact factors, but indexation and impact factor are unrelated.

Many credible journals don't have impact factors, but they are indexed in several well-known indexes. Therefore, the lack of an impact factor may not accurately represent the credibility of a journal.

Of course, impact factors may be important for other reasons, such as institutional requirements or grant funding. Read this authoritative piece on the uses, importance, and limitations of impact factors .

Final Thoughts

Selecting an indexed journal is an important part of the publication journey. Indexation can tell you a lot about a journal. Publishing in an indexed journal can increase the visibility and credibility of your research. If you're having trouble selecting a journal for publication, consider learning more about AJE's journal recommendation service .

Catherine Zettel Nalen, MS

Academic Editor, Specialist, and Journal Recommendation Team Lead

See our "Privacy Policy"

The Physician’s Index for Ethics in Medicine

Is an information resource designed to help clinicians keep up-to-date with current and emerging ethical issues, and to make better ethical decisions in clinical practice..

This ready source of information covers the fields of bioethics, medical ethics, and the philosophy of medicine.

The Physician’s Index is comprised of a comprehensive, online bibliographic database of professional publications and feature articles that address vital topics in depth. The feature articles are chosen by our esteemed Editorial Advisory Board .

MAJOR FUNDING BY: 

OUR ONLINE DATABASE: HELPS PHYSICIANS EASILY FIND PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST

Over 30,000 Records from Publications that Originate in over 90 Countries

• Articles from over 800 Journals and e-Journals
• Books, e-Books, and Book Reviews
• Anthologies and Contributions to Anthologies
• Author-written Abstracts
• Thorough Subject Indexing that facilitates focused research and general browsing by the physician

3 Search Options:

• Basic Search
• 60 Preselected Searches on Key Topics
• Advanced Search

OUR LATEST FEATURE ARTICLES: THE EDITORAL ADVISORY BOARD’S EXPERT RECOMMENDATIONS

Association Between Physician Burnout and Identification With Medicine as a Calling (Abstract only) by Andrew J. Jager, MA, Michael A. Tutty, PhD, and Audiey C. Kao, MD, PhD

Behind Closed Doors, Management of Patient Expectations in Primary Care Practices by Sheri A. Keitz, MD, PhD, et al

Beyond Burnout — Redesigning Care to Restore Meaning and Sanity for Physicians By Alexi A. Wright, MD, MPD, and Ingrid T. Katz, MD, MHS

Conflicts of Interest for Patient-Advocacy Organizations by Matthew S. McCoy, PhD, et al

The Devil is in the Third Year: A Longitudinal Study of Erosion of Empathy in Medical School by Mohammadreza Hojat, PhD, et al

Emerging from EHR Purgatory — Moving from Process to Outcomes by Allan H. Goroll, MD

Ending the Opioid Epidemic — A Call to Action by Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA

The Essential Role of Medical Ethics Education in Achieving Professionalism:  The Romanoff Report by Joseph A. Caresse, MD, MPH, and Janet Malek, PhD, et. al.

Ethics and Clinical Research — The 50th Anniversary of Beecher’s Bombshell by David S. Jones, MD, PhD, Christine Grady, MSN, PhD, and Susan E. Lederer, PhD

Full Disclosure — Out-of-Pocket Costs as Side Effects by Peter A. Ubel, MD, Amy P. Abernethy, MD, PhD, and S. Yousuf Zafar, MD, MHS

An Interdisciplinary Response to Contemporary Concerns about Brain Death Determination by Ariane Lewis, MD, James L. Bernat, MD, et al

Moral Choices for Today’s Physician by Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP

No One Needs To Know: A Physician Recalls Taking Part in his First Cover-up by Neil S. Calman, MD

OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Stops Promoting Opioids, Cuts Sales Staff by Reuters in The Washington Post

Physician-Assisted Dying: A Turning Point? by Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, and Anna E. Roberts, LLB

Should Informed Consent Be Required for Apnea Testing in Patients With Suspected Brain Death? No by Ariane Lewis, MD, and David Greer, MD

Should Informed Consent Be Required for Apnea Testing in Patients With Suspected Brain Death? Yes by Robert D. Truog, MD, and Robert C. Tasker, MD

To Care Is Human — Collectively Confronting the Clinician-Burnout Crisis by Victor J. Dzau, MD, Darrell G. Kirch, MD, and Thomas J. Nasca, MD

• Share full article

Why, Exactly, Are Ultraprocessed Foods So Hard to Resist? This Study Is Trying to Find Out.

Understanding why they’re so easy to overeat might be key to making them less harmful, some researchers say.

Supported by

By Alice Callahan

Photographs by Lexey Swall

Alice Callahan spent two days at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and interviewed more than a dozen researchers about ultraprocessed foods.

• July 30, 2024 Updated 11:21 a.m. ET

It was 9 a.m. on a Friday in March, and Ernest Jones III was hungry.

From a hospital bed at a research facility at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, he surveyed his meal tray: Honey Nut Cheerios with fiber-enriched whole milk, a plastic-wrapped blueberry muffin and margarine.

“Simple, old school,” one of those “Saturday morning breakfasts from back in the day,” said Mr. Jones, 38, who is studying to become a pastor.

He was about halfway through his 28-day stay at the N.I.H., and Mr. Jones was one of 36 people participating in a nutrition trial that is expected to be completed in late 2025. For one month each, researchers will draw participants’ blood, track their body fat and weight, measure the calories they burn, and feed them three meticulously designed meals per day.

The subjects don’t know it, but their job is to help answer some of the most pressing questions in nutrition: Are ultraprocessed foods harmful to health? Are they a major driver of weight gain and obesity? And why is it so easy to eat so many of them?

If researchers can answer these questions, they say, perhaps there are ways to make ultraprocessed foods healthier.

The Trouble With Processing

Ultraprocessed foods encompass a large range of foods and drinks that are made using methods and ingredients you wouldn’t typically use or find in a home kitchen. Sodas, processed meats and flavored yogurts are part of this category, as are most breakfast cereals, packaged breads and plant milks.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Advertisement