You may hear references to the h-index or indeed be asked for your h-index as it is one of the most prevalent author metrics used. The metric was suggested by physicist Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005 as an attempt to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the published body of work of a researcher but it can be misleading which is why we do not recommend its use.
The h-index is based on the number of citations that a researcher has received consistently across all their published outputs. However, it is discipline size dependent with individuals in small specialized fields of research tending to have a lower h-index, it doesn’t take into account self-citations and the longer that a researcher has been writing and publishing the more likely it is that they will have a higher h-index.
Other metrics include the g-index and the m-index which are modifications on the h-index which try to take into account some of the criticisms of the h-index as above.
