As part of the games to improve universities ranking, many university administrators are starting to look at the H-Index. According to my reliable source Wikipedia, The h-index "is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications". According to a recent report, universities in Singapore use H-index to determine the appointments of professors in certain discipline.
However, H-index is a dangerous tool. This is reflected in the recent surprise ranking of Alexandria University, which is ranked top 200 in the world, whereby its professor Mohamed El Naschie is accused to have manipulated his citations. More can be found here on how H-index might not be a trustworthy tool for measuring a scientist's actual impact: http://francisworldinsideout.wordpress.com/
It was not the h-index that propelled Alexandria into the top 200 and the top 5 for research impact. It was Thomson Reuters' normalisation of citations by field and year plus a low total number of publications plus El Naschie's self citation and citation by a small group of associations.
ReplyDeleteIf THE had used the h-index or any other measure of citations, Alexandria would have been where it is in the HEEACT and Shanghai rankings, nowhere.
See elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com and rankingwatch.blogspot.com for more details.
Thanks Richard for the info!
ReplyDelete