Confronta i metodi

	H-Index	Journal Citation Reports	Journal Impact Factor	PubMed e MEDLINE	Database Scopus
Campo	Bibliometria	Bibliometria	Bibliometria	Bibliometria	Bibliometria
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	2005	1975	1955	1966	2004
Ideatore	Jorge Hirsch, University of California San Diego	Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now Clarivate Analytics	Eugene Garfield, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)	National Library of Medicine (NLM), U.S. National Institutes of Health	Elsevier
Tipo	Metric	Tool	Metric	Database	Database
Fonte seminale	Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 102(46), 16569-16572.	Clarivate Analytics. (2024). Journal Citation Reports. Retrieved from https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/journal-citation-reports/	Garfield, E. (1972). Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation. Science, 178(4060), 471-479.	National Library of Medicine. (2024). PubMed: Home. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/	Elsevier. (2024). Scopus: The largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/products/scopus
Alias	Hirsch index, h factor, h-number	JCR, Clarivate Journal Citation Reports	IF, JIF, Impact Factor, 2-year Impact Factor	PubMed, MEDLINE, NLM, PubMed Central	Scopus, Elsevier Scopus
Correlati	5	5	5	5	5
Sintesi	The h-index, or Hirsch index, is a quantitative metric proposed by physicist Jorge Hirsch in 2005 to measure researcher productivity and citation impact simultaneously. A researcher has an h-index of h if they have published at least h papers, each cited at least h times. For example, an h-index of 20 means the researcher has 20 papers each cited at least 20 times. The h-index is widely used in research evaluation, hiring, and promotion decisions, though experts debate its limitations. It provides a single number balancing quantity of publications against quality of citations, offering an intuitive summary of research career impact.	Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is an annual publication by Clarivate Analytics providing comprehensive citation metrics and performance analytics for journals indexed in Web of Science Core Collection. Launched in 1975, JCR publishes Impact Factor, the most widely recognized journal quality metric, alongside supplementary metrics (5-year IF, Journal Citation Indicator, Immediacy Index, Cited Half-Life, and citation distribution analysis). JCR is the authoritative source for journal ranking, benchmarking, and impact assessment in research evaluation systems globally. Access requires institutional subscription, though some institutions provide free access to affiliated researchers.	Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a metric developed by Eugene Garfield in 1955 and published annually by Clarivate Analytics through Journal Citation Reports (JCR). It measures the average citation frequency of articles published in a journal over a two-year window, serving as a proxy for journal prestige and influence. A journal's Impact Factor equals the number of citations received in year Y to articles published in Y-1 and Y-2, divided by the number of citable items published in that same window. Despite widespread adoption in research evaluation, Impact Factor has significant limitations and critics argue it conflates journal prestige with article quality.	PubMed is a free, publicly accessible literature database maintained by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. It provides access to biomedical and life sciences literature from MEDLINE (the curated subset of ~30 million indexed journal articles), life science journals, in-process articles, and preprints. MEDLINE, established in 1966, is the gold standard for biomedical literature indexing, using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a hierarchical controlled vocabulary of ~33,000 terms. PubMed is the primary discovery tool for clinicians, researchers, and healthcare professionals worldwide seeking evidence-based information.	Scopus, owned by Elsevier, is the world's largest abstract and citation database covering peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters across all scientific disciplines. Launched in 2004, Scopus now indexes over 37 million documents from more than 6,500 journals, with expanded coverage of open-access publications and emerging regional journals. Scopus provides researchers and institutions with comprehensive citation tracking, field-normalized impact metrics (CiteScore, SJR, SNIP), and analytical tools for literature discovery, research evaluation, and institutional benchmarking.