Not actually a question - it's a link to a recent blog post that describes a procedure for working it out. Hope it's of interest:
https://jeffollerton.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/how-does-a-scientists-h-index-change-over-time/
https://jeffollerton.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/how-does-a-scientists-h-index-change-over-time/
How do you include taxonomists in an h-index ? With a conservative estimate of 84% of the planet's species unknown to science, I still regard them as an important group of scientists. If a taxonomist publishes a good revision of a group, everyone will use it, but no-one will cite it. If the revision is a mess, lots will cite it as they correct the errors. One solution would be for authors to cite the authors of species they have studied in the list of references, but I can't see that happening.
Hi Anthony - you raise an interesting and important point, to which there are several answers. One is that the h-index is field-specific, such that taxonomists should not be compared with ecologists or molecular biologists, etc., and for some fields the h-index is not a good descriptor of the scientific impact of an individual. That said, I think that good taxonomic revisions will also be cited, and generally for a longer period, than poor ones (though of course there are exceptions). Finally I'd encourage all ecologists and evolutionary biologists to cite taxonomic papers where appropriate (I certainly do) though citing a source for each species would be unwieldy, especially for community-level studies and for species that have gone through significant taxonomic revision.
Thank you very much, but I know how to calculate the h-index! It was a rhetorical question linked to a blog post on the topic - follow the link below the question.
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