A few people have mentioned what their h-index is. Although the h-index is a poor measure to use when assessing young researchers I am curious to know what everyone's h score is. I'll start:
area: neuroscience
pubs: 9 (2004-2011)
h-index: 4
How do you calculate this exactly? Much appreciated!
It is the number of publications you have that have been cited at least that many times. OK, so its hard to describe. Here is my example: I have 15 publications and 8 of them have been cited at least 8 times, so my h-index is 8. My ninth pub has only been cited 2 times, but when it gets to 9, then my h-index will be nine. I'm in clinical by the way.
The easiest way to calculate is to go to Web of science and search for yourself in author finder. Then click on the link at the upper portion of hte page that says "citation analysis" or something similar. Then it just spits it out.
H-index seems kind of useless for those of us who have only just completed grad school and/or have a lot of recent papers and/or in press papers. That is, if most of your publications are from '09 onward, your H-index will necessarily be low irregardless of the quality of those publications. For instance, I noticed many of the posters here started publishing in '04 or '05 when I was still an undergraduate. Why would a school use this to evaluate assistant professors? Rather, it seems like a much more useful tool for associate professor hires.
I'm not sure that such a blanket statement is true. In fact, I was not aware of my own H-index until I went on a job talk at a R1/research heavy department and the person introducing me mentioned my h-index. So I guess it was impressive to this person and I was offered and did take that position.
I certainly dont' think having a low or nonexistant h-index is going to hurt you for a beginning job, as long as you haves pubs in press or published in high quality journals. However, I think that if its high enough it does grab people's attention in a positive way, even at the assistant level.
That being said, I dont' think I'd ever put it on my CV at any stage of my career. If someone wants to look it up, they can go for it.
Roddy Roediger has published a few columns on this and other measures in the last few years in the APS Obersver (they are all available online on the APS website). They're really great. He seems just as critical as some of the posters above. He overall suggests that when evaluating any faculty one should use a variety of measures. For junior faculty he suggests that the ratings of the journals they publish in might be the best bet, as junior faculty often have few pubs and even those are not likely to be highly cited. So he suggests using the quality of the journal as a predictor of the faculty's future impact. The h index is interesting, but it is so skewed that it's only really relevant for really high-level people anyway.
Area: Cognitive/Developmental
Pubs: 31 (2008-2011)
H-index: 12
I don't understand how people with this many publications over such a short period of time are searching for work. These numbers are comparable to tenured faculty!
I agree! These h's are not normal for people on the job market. There ARE LOTS of tenured faculty with less.
People who posted: what gives? Do you have jobs or offers this year? What kinds of papers are they? How of the papers in your h are first authored? Do you self-cite a lot?
I agree they do seem very high. Mine (above) is 8 and I think its aided by having a mentor who is well-regarded and very prolific. So I had two early pubs where I was 2nd author and these have been cited alot. The others I am first author and they were projects from grad school that were published in good journals.
I did get a tenure track job starting this fall.
"Area: Cognitive/Developmental
Pubs: 55 (2011-2014)
H-index: 21
Applied for jobs last year, no interviews… :("
This completely blows my mind. Having that much to show for a 3-4 year period is insane, and even more insane that it would not turn out with interviews and offers.