Gracza T and Somoskovi I "Impact factor and/or Hirsch index?]" Orv Hetil, May 6, 2007; 148(18): 849-52.

[Eugene Garfield]

TITLE :  Impact factor and/or Hirsch index?]

AUTHORS: T Gracza and I Somoskovi

SOURCE : Orv Hetil, May 6, 2007; 148(18): 849-52. 

Pécsi Tudományegyetem Orvostudományi és Egészségtudományi Centrum Könyvtára 
Pécs Szigeti út 12. 7624. 

ABSTRACT:
 
Is the best measure of a scientist's worth the total number of his or her 
published papers? For many years Institute for Scientific Information has 
been publishing the lists of impact factors providing quantitative tools 
for ranking scientists. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, 
the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information. Impact factors are 
calculated each year by the Institute for Scientific Information for those 
journals which it indexes, and are published in Journal Citation Reports. 
These measures apply only to journals, not individual articles or 
individual scientists. For the impact factor of individual scientists, 
there exists the h-index or Hirsch number. The Hirsch-index (h-index) has 
recently been defined by Hirsch as a new method for measuring the 
scientific activity. If a scientist has published n articles which all have 
been cited at least n times, then he will have a h-index of n . The h-index 
seeks to describe the impact of individual researchers, rather than 
journals. The h-index is the result of the balance between the number of 
publications and the number of citations per publication. H-index: Impact 
of Individual Scientists. H-index or/and impact factor - it is the question 
of the future.