The calculation is performed according to the distribution of citations that they receive the publications of a researcher. The definition of Hirsch is as follows:
A scientist has h index if h of his Np jobs have at least h citations each and the remaining (Np – h) each have jobs than h citations.
In other words, a scholar with an index equal to 3 3 published works cited at least 3 times each. The index is designed to occur with a relatively simple process not only production but also the influence of a scientist, distinguishing it from those who had published many articles, but of little interest. In addition, the index is not overly influenced by individual articles of great success.
The effectiveness of the index is limited to the comparison between scientists of the same field, not least because the publications about the conventions may vary: in physics, a moderately productive scientist will typically have an index equal to the number of years of work, while scientists working in medical or biological tend to have higher values.
The index is easily calculated by querying the databases of scientific publications in the network.
Hirsch has shown that the index is a good predictor for a scientist who has won awards like the Nobel Prize or is a member of a major academy.