'A Poor Measure'

H-indices offer poor measures of early-career researchers' productivity and potential, Stanford University's Richard Zare argues in Angewandte Chemie this week. "Just as the IQ number does not capture the creativity and originality of a person's work, the h-index is not a full measure," Zare says. "Some rough correlations do exist, but in judging researchers early in their career, the h-index seems to be a poor measure. It is more a trailing, rather than a leading, indicator of professional success." He adds that while citation-based metrics can speak to the value of a particular publication, "not being highly cited does not mean that someone's work will never have value."