Research Impact Metrics

An h-index h indicates that a researcher or journal has published h articles that have been cited h or more times.

Though it was originally developed as a measure of the influence of a single scholar, the h-index can also be applied to a periodical.

For more information on accessing an h-index for yourself, see the h-index for authors page.

Google Scholar now tracks journal h-index based on citations from all publications that are indexed in Google Scholar. Google Scholar reports the "h5-index"; that is, the h-index calculated using the most recent five years of a journal's publication history. Users can search for metrics on a specific title or view the top-rated journals in a language or subject area.

To find the h-index:

• Go to Google Scholar and click Metrics available under the menu.
• View subject category data. Click a broad subject category at the left, e.g., Social Sciences.
• Click Subcategories and make a selection. The top 20 journals in each subcategory are listed.
• For detailed information on a single journal on the list, click the h5 number. It will list the individual papers that comprise the h-index as well as the journal's position within its subject category or categories.
• You may also search for a specific journal at the top of the page and find its h-index. However, category ranking is not provided for journals outside the top 20.

Google Scholar generally finds more citing articles than Web of Science. Therefore, its h-indexes are usually higher. Different journals should not be compared unless the same source is used to generate the data for both.

Google Scholar Metrics Help Page