Following the post above, it is worth noting a paper published yesterday in Scientometrics by three researchers affiliated with Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. The paper reports the results of a survey on the h-index involving 1081 German Professors.
The results of that study are both revealing and somewhat profoundly unsettling. The h-index remains a highly influential indicator of academic performance, particularly in the sciences and medicine, where it is seen as important both for individual researchers and for their disciplines.
Perhaps the most striking finding is that around two fifths of the surveyed professors either did not know how the h-index is calculated or believed they knew but failed a basic knowledge test. This exposes a significant paradox: a metric that can influence academic careers, reputations and evaluation processes is still poorly understood by a substantial proportion of German academics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-021-03968-1
PS - Still, it is a pity that the authors did not cite the composite indicator proposed by Stanford Professor John P. A. Ioannidis and colleagues, which combines the h-index with five other citation-based metrics (total citations; Hirsch h-index; coauthorship-adjusted Schreiber hm-index; number of citations to papers as single author; number of citations to papers as single or first author; and number of citations to papers as single, first, or last author.
