2012/01/26 by H. C. Spruit, Spruit, H. C.
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Text Analysis Techniques #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Forecasting Techniques and Applications #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #astro-ph.IM #cs.DL #physics.soc-ph #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1201.5476
More references added, small corrections. Research note, 3 small pages, 1 figure
openalex publication_date 2012/01/26 · arxiv created 2012/02/01 · arxiv updated 2012/02/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Use of the Hirsch-index (h) as measure of an author's visibility in the scientific literature has become popular as an alternative to a gross measure like total citations (c). I show that, at least in astrophysics, h correlates tightly with overall citations. The mean relation is h=0.5(√ c+1). Outliers are few and not too far from the mean, especially if `normalized' ADS citations are used for c and h. Whatever the theoretical reasoning behind it, the Hirsch index in practice does not appear to measure something significantly new.