Ranking Scientist Output : h-index by Jorge Hirsch

"Jorge E. Hirsch, a physics professor at UCSD, devised an alternative that appears to be a simpler and more reliable way to rank scientific output within a discipline than any now in use."

"In a paper published in the November 15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which appears this week in the journal's early online edition, Hirsch explains that his "h-index" can give a reliable "estimate of the importance, significance and broad impact of a scientist's cumulative research contributions." What's more, for each scientist, his method provides a single number, which takes only 30 seconds to compute, that can be used to compare a scientist's relative rank within a discipline"

via EurekAlert!