Web of Science: showing a bug today that can mislead scientific research output's prediction

As it happened in all domains of human activities, economic issues and the increase of people working in scientific research have altered the way scientific production is evaluated so as the objectives of performing the evaluation. Introduced in 2005 by J. E. Hirsch as an indicator able to measure individual scientific output not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality, h index has spread throughout the world. In 2007, Hirsch proposed its adoption also as the best to predict future scientific achievement and, consequently, a useful guide for investments in research and for institutions when hiring members for their scientific staff. Since then, several authors have also been using the Thomson ISI Web of Science database to develop their proposals for evaluating research output. Here we show that a subtle flaw in Web of Science can inflate the results of info collected, therefore compromising the exactness and, consequently, the effectiveness of Hirsch’s proposal and its variations. 1Introduction: A decade of h index In 2005 Jorge Hirsch proposes a quantitative evaluation method that could be used to all research fields considering both quantity and quality [1-2]. Since then we started discussing this indicator aiming to show that it is not merely a new mathematical value. It is important to notice that it was proposed in the United States and this is an aspect to be taken into account considering the quest for investing resources in areas that can give good economic results. According to the methodology proposed by Hirsch, to get to the h index, the first step is to organize all the articles