English

Does the h-index have predictive power?

Physics and Society 2008-03-02 v2 Statistical Mechanics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

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

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0708.0646,
  title  = {Does the h-index have predictive power?},
  author = {J. E. Hirsch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.0646},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

Sect. V added on combining h and N_c, with new Fig. 11. Other minor changes. To be published in PNAS

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:04:54.096Z