Abstract
The h-index has attracted wide attention from both scientometricians and science policy makers since it was proposed in 2005. Advocates champion h-index for its simplicity embracing both quantity and quality, while also express concern about its abuse in research evaluation practices and database-dependence attribute. We argue that it is increasingly important to calculate and interpret the h-index precisely along with the rapid evolution of bibliographic databases. In memory of Dr. Judit Bar-Ilan, we join the h-index discussion in Scientometrics by further probing a similar “which h-index” question via comparing different versions of h-index within the Web of Science. In this article we put forward the reasons of different WoS h-indices from two perspectives, which are often neglected by bibliometric studies. We suggest that users should specify the details of data sources of h-index calculation for research promotion and evaluation practices.
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Notes
According to Judit Bar-Ilan’s personal google scholar page, this paper is her most cited paper which has been cited 733 times. Data accessed on 22 November 2019 via https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mkb_14UAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra.
https://apps.webofknowledge.com/. Besides, we find a latest comprehensive article focusing on Web of Science during the proof process (Birkle et al. 2020).
The contents under the Web of Science platform can be found in http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOKRS513R8.1/help/WOK/hp_whatsnew_wok.html. More detailed information about the Web of Science platform can be found in https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/webofscience-platform/.
More information can be found in http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/WoK_5-13_ReleaseNotes.pdf.
The phrase WoS in this section denotes WoS platform or WoSCC, as appropriate.
Since the data were accessed on Nov. 7 2019, not all the publications in 2019 were covered.
We have tried various ways to find the full texts of all the 129 records including writing letters to the corresponding authors, and we ended up with 127 publications with full texts accessible.
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Acknowledgements
This research is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71801189 and #71904168) and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (#LQ18G030010 and #LQ18G010005). All of the views expressed here are those of the authors who also take full responsibility for any errors.
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Hu, G., Wang, L., Ni, R. et al. Which h-index? An exploration within the Web of Science. Scientometrics 123, 1225–1233 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03425-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03425-5