Many of the questions we receive are related to the h-index. Today we bring you a guest post by Meshna Koren, Second Line Support Manager for Scopus (also known as "she who knows all about Scopus").
The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. In Scopus, the h-index is not a static value; it is calculated live on a set of results each time you look it up. The calculation was suggested by Hirsch and it can be summed up as:
A scientist has an index h if h of his/her Np papers has at least h citations each, and the other (Np h) papers have no more than h citations each.
In Scopus you can calculate it on any set of results; it does not have to be papers belonging to just one author. Just run a random search: TITLE-ABS-KEY(mars water ice), select all results, click View Citation Overview and therein you will see the h-index value for that set (see image).