Evaluation of the Scientific Outputs of Researchers with Similar H Index: a Critical Approach

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: h-index has been always reviewed as one of the most useful criteria for evaluating the scientific outputs of researchers by the sciencometric experts. In this study, the h-index of 40 Iranian researchers accompanied with its relationship to assessment criteria of scientific outputs such as the number of articles, scientific age, number of citations and self-citation were reviewed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The first part of this study was related to the literature review. But the information of 40 Iranian researchers’ Citation Reports was observational extracted from WOS database and the Pearson correlation coefficient test was used to answer the research hypotheses RESULTS: Citation analysis showed that 40 selected researchers published 877 articles in web of science up to 9 January 2013. These articles have been cited 3858 time. The average of their h-index was estimated 38.5 ±12.12 Correlation coefficient test showed that there was a significant and direct relationship between the h-index and the number of papers, the number of citations and self-citation (Sig>0.05) but there was no significant relationship between scientific age and h-index (Sig> 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of the data showed that the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the researchers with the same h-index had considerable differences. Therefore, only the h-index should not be a criterion for scientific ranking of the researchers and other complementary indexes such as M parameter and G index along with h-index must be used to be able to more accurately determine the degree of scientific influence of the researchers with the same h.