h-index
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The largest h such that h of a researcher's (or journal's) papers have at least h citations each.
LaTeX: h = \max\{\, i : c_{(i)} \ge i \,\}
Variables and notation#
c_(i) is the ith largest citation count; h is the largest rank i whose paper has at least i citations.
Worked example#
For sorted citations (10,8,5,3,1), the third paper has at least 3 citations but the fourth fewer than 4, so h=3.
Related methods and when to use them#
h-index combines output and citation thresholds; total citations are more sensitive to highly cited outliers. It depends on database coverage, field and time since publication and is not a per-paper quality score.
Sources and further reading#
Key findings#
- No paper of the tracked journals mentioned h-index in the last 30 days (2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05).
- From Nov 2023 to Oct 2026, 95 archived papers mentioned h-index in their title, abstract, keywords or full text, most of them in Mar 2026 (7).
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), h-index was mentioned in 340 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in higher education and research (255), management (21) and AI (18).
- 26 of them were published in 2025, against 31 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Nanjing University (5), Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University (5) and HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences (3).
- The journals publishing most of them were Scientometrics (45), Journal of Informetrics (16) and Future Business Journal (7).
- The most-cited of them is “A bibliometric-based survey on AHP and TOPSIS techniques” (Expert Systems with Applications, 2017), with 491 citations.
Mentions over 36 months#
| Trend | Nov 23–Oct 24 | Nov 24–Oct 25 | Nov 25–Oct 26 | 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 32 | 38 | 95 |
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Higher Education and Research | 23 | 33 | 43 | 36 | 31 | 22 | 20 | 11 | 14 | 22 |
| Management | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| AI | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Economics | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Information Systems | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Operations Research | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Statistics | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Finance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Marketing | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 31 | 39 | 50 | 42 | 37 | 25 | 27 | 26 | 26 | 37 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scientometrics | 45 |
| 2 | Journal of Informetrics | 16 |
| 3 | Future Business Journal | 7 |
| 4 | Quality & Quantity | 5 |
| 5 | The Journal of Academic Librarianship | 3 |
| 6 | Journal of Business and Psychology | 3 |
| 7 | Journal Of Big Data | 3 |
| 8 | Knowledge and Information Systems | 2 |
| 9 | International Journal of Approximate Reasoning | 2 |
| 10 | Journal of the Knowledge Economy | 2 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nanjing University | 5 |
| 2 | Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University | 5 |
| 3 | HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences | 3 |
| 4 | Mahidol University | 3 |
| 5 | Universidad de Granada | 3 |
| 6 | University of Technology Sydney | 3 |
| 7 | Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham | 2 |
| 8 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | 2 |
| 9 | Children's Medical Center | 2 |
| 10 | Dalian University of Technology | 2 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 19 |
| 2 | United States | 14 |
| 3 | Germany | 12 |
| 4 | Spain | 11 |
| 5 | Italy | 10 |
| 6 | India | 9 |
| 7 | United Kingdom | 8 |
| 8 | Hungary | 8 |
| 9 | Pakistan | 8 |
| 10 | Australia | 6 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | h-index | 72 |
| 2 | bibliometric indicators | 15 |
| 3 | citation analysis | 15 |
| 4 | research evaluation | 14 |
| 5 | research trends | 14 |
| 6 | research productivity | 13 |
| 7 | citation impact | 10 |
| 8 | citation metrics | 9 |
| 9 | citation counts | 8 |
| 10 | co-authorship | 6 |
Most-cited papers#
| Date | Title | Journal | Authors | Affiliations |
|---|
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). h-index. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/equations/h-index
@misc{scholar4ai-equations-h-index,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {h-index},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/equations/h-index}},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}