Getting the Most Out of Web of Science

The h-index is located in the Citation Reports. The h-index highlighted in the image below indicates that the articles listed in these results have 162 articles that have been cited at least 162 times.

To locate the h-index for a specific author, use basic search and choose Author from the drop-down menu. Search by the author's name. It is best to use only the first initial of the author's first name, as some citation formats only include the first initial. Others may include the full first name.

From your results list, click on the Citation Report link on the right side of the page.

You can see the h-index in the image below. The h-index of 14 means that the author has published 14 articles that were cited at least 14 times.

An h-index measures an author's productivity and impact.

For example, an author with an h-index of 10 means that author has published 10 articles that have been cited at least 10 times.

They may have published 20 articles, but only 10 of those articles were cited at least 10 times. They may have one article that was cited 20 times, but unless they have 20 articles that were cited at least 20 times, their h-index would still be 10.

An author could have one article that was cited 80 times, but if they have only published 1 article their h-index would only be 1. This is because they have only 1 article that was cited at least 1 time.

If an author has 1 article that was cited 100 times, and they have published a total of 100 articles, but only 2 other articles were cited at least 3 times, their h-index would be 3. This is because they have published only 3 articles that have been cited at least 3 times.

One author with 1 article cited 209 times, but has only published 2 articles with the other article having been cited 10 times, would have a lower h-index than an author who published 70 articles, all cited at least 70 times.

The concept is that an h-index does not measure the number of citations alone, but combines this metric with the author's productivity. This would prevent authors with only 1 highly cited paper from having more value than an author with several papers cited several times.