If you want to check whether your name is listed in SCOPUS database or not, just go to http://www.scopus.com and choose “Author Preview” to search for author and type your name there.

If you can find your name in the list, then try to click your name and wait. You will be informed about your h index.

According to several resources, the h index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications. The index can also be applied to the productivity and impact of a group of scientists, such as a department or university or country. The index was suggested by Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist at UCSD, as a tool for determining theoretical physicists’ relative quality and is sometimes called the Hirsch index or Hirsch number.

The index is based on the distribution of citations received by a given researcher’s publications. Hirsch writes:

A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.

In other words, a scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least h times.Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication. The index is designed to improve upon simpler measures such as the total number of citations or publications. The index works properly only for comparing scientists working in the same field; citation conventions differ widely among different fields.

The h-index serves as an alternative to more traditional journal impact factor metrics in the evaluation of the impact of the work of a particular researcher. Because only the most highly cited articles contribute to the h-index, its determination is a relatively simpler process. Hirsch has demonstrated that h has high predictive value for whether a scientist has won honors like National Academy membership or the Nobel Prize. In physics, a moderately productive scientist should have an h equal to the number of years of service while biomedical scientists tend to have higher values. The h-index grows as citations accumulate and thus it depends on the ‘academic age’ of a researcher.

Hirsch suggested (with large error bars) that, for physicists, a value for h of about 12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences. Little systematic investigation has been made on how academic recognition correlates with h-index over different institutions, nations and fields of study.

Let’s try to have a h index in the future.