title: Use of the h-index to measure the quality of the output of health services researchers.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the use of the h-index to measure the quality of the output of health services researchers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Online survey, with bibliometric analysis of a convenience volunteer sample of researchers mainly in the UK, North America and Australasia. Self-reported from Google Scholar: h-index; number of papers; number of citations; number of papers with ≥ 10 citations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were complete responses from 532 health services researchers of whom 371 (70%) were from the UK. Of the bibliometric measures, the h-index appeared to be the best discriminator between other measures of quality (e.g. seniority; entry into the last UK Research Assessment Exercise). The median h-index was 12, with 90th and 95th quantiles of 40 and 52, respectively. Statisticians had the highest h-index with qualitative researchers the lowest (median 16 and 7, respectively). The h-index was predicted to increase by approximately 1 point annually with the biggest increase in statisticians and smallest in qualitative researchers when estimated by quantile regression.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The h-index is a useful summary measure of output and quality of health services researchers. However, any accurate interpretation of bibliometric measures needs to take into account a person's research discipline.
authors.affiliation: Professor of Health and Social Care, Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, York, UK.
authors.forename: Yvonne
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Birks
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fairhurst
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bloor
authors.forename: Marion
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Baird
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Torgerson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015706:Bibliometrics; D003625:Data Collection; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic
keywords: h-index; quality; research