{"id":440,"date":"2008-06-30T11:40:56","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T15:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/?p=440"},"modified":"2008-06-30T11:44:37","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T15:44:37","slug":"why-the-h-index-is-little-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/why-the-h-index-is-little-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the h-index is little use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m continually surprised how popular the h-index is becoming.  This post is a reiteration of something I <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/?p=248\">noted in an earlier post<\/a>: it appears that for most scientists, the h-index can be computed to a good approximation from the formula:<\/p>\n<p>h ~ sqrt(T) \/ 2,<\/p>\n<p>where T is the total number of citations the scientist.  Thus <em>the h-index contains little information beyond the total number of citations<\/em>, and is not properly regarded as a new measure of impact at all.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/?p=248\">earlier post<\/a> contains additional details, including some caveats, and comments on possible further improvements to this rule. It really needs a detailed study, but I don&#8217;t think the basic point is in doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m continually surprised how popular the h-index is becoming. This post is a reiteration of something I noted in an earlier post: it appears that for most scientists, the h-index can be computed to a good approximation from the formula: h ~ sqrt(T) \/ 2, where T is the total number of citations the scientist.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/why-the-h-index-is-little-use\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why the h-index is little use<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelnielsen.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}