In my opinion, the H index can be considered as a good indicator to measure the impact, and therefore the quality, of an author and his research work.
However, what is also important is to have access to open institutional archives in order to compare multiple resources, for example Google Scholar, Scopus, etc. to obtain data needed to find the citations and to establish in a correct way the H-index.
As for the recommendations, they don't exist in the academic scientific field
Between research and citations/reads/recommendations, which came first? Which should depend on which? Citations, reads or recommendations all depend on the quality of research and not the other way around. If your research quality is high, your citations and other measurements will be high if the topic is trendy.