Evidence map›Paper›PMID 18040045›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007

Does the H index have predictive power?

J E Hirsch

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 195 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
195citing papers in PubMed, 7 pooled it
50.1field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

195 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 957 citations in OpenAlex.

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  20. New Insights on Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025
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135 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.

J E HirschDepartment of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0319, USA. jhirsch@ucsd.edu
University of California, San Diego · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Bibliometric measures of individual scientific achievement are of particular interest if they can be used to predict future achievement. Here we report results of an empirical study of the predictive power of the h index compared with other indicators. Our findings indicate that the h index is better than other indicators considered (total citation count, citations per paper, and total paper count) in predicting future scientific achievement. We discuss reasons for the superiority of the h index.

Indexed as

BibliometricsMathematical ComputingPublicationsScienceAchievementPrognosis

Identifiers

PMID18040045
PMCPMC2148266
OpenAlexW1982218215

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.