Abstract
Soil science is a relatively young and specialised field of science. This note discusses the use of the h index as a scientific output measure in soil science. We explore the governing factors of h index in soil science: the number of soil scientists, the number of papers published, the average number of citations, and the age of the scientist. We found the average relationship between h index and scientific age for soil science: h = 0.7 t. The h index for soil science is smaller than other major science disciplines but norms for h need to be established
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ball, P. (2005), Index aims for fair ranking of scientists. Nature, 436: 900.
Banks, M. G. (2006), An extension of the Hirsch index: Indexing scientific topics and compounds. Scientometrics, 69: 161–168.
Baveye, P., Jacobson, A. R., Allaire, S. E., Tandarich, J. P., Bryant, R. B. (2006), Whither goes soil science in the United States and Canada? Soil Science, 171: 501–518.
Glänzel, W. (2006), On the h index — A mathematical approach to a new measure of publication activity and citation impact. Scientometrics, 67: 315–321.
Hartemink, A. E. (2001) Look at it this way — Publishing science: past, present and the future. Outlook on Agriculture, 30(4): 231–237.
Hartemink, A. E., McBratney, A. B., Cattle, J. A. (2001), Developments and trends in soil science: 100 volumes of Geoderma (1967–2001). Geoderma, 100(3–4): 217–268.
Hirsch, J. E., (2005), An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102: 16569–16572.
IUSS, 2006. The Future of Soil Science. A. E. Hartemink (Ed.), IUSS, Wageningen.
Kelly, C. D., Jennions, M. D. (2006), The h index and career assessment by numbers. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21: 167–170.
Mermut, A. R., Eswaran, H. (1997), Opportunities for soil science in a milieu of reduced funds. Canadian Journal of Soil Science, 77: 1–7.
Redner, S. (2005), Citation statistics from 110 years of Physical Review. Physics Today, 58: 49–54.
Tinker, P. B. (1958), Soil science in a changing world. Journal of Soil Science, 36: 1–8.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Minasny, B., Hartemink, A.E. & McBratney, A. Soil science and the h index. Scientometrics 73, 257–264 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1811-z
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1811-z