Google Scholar Citations Help on Calculation of H-Index of a Researcher in the Field of Pharmacology may be Misleading

The importance of impact factor of journals and h-index of academics who aspire in their career to the rank of professor cannot be over emphasized. Google Scholar Citations Help (GSCH) is a software (A – W. Harzing’s publish – or – perish) that academics can use to determine the h-index of their publications. I used the software to calculate h-index of my publications, unfortunately what the software calculated was more of cumulative h-index of 100 publications belonging to 132 academics including myself, from various specialities and institutions. In 2008, Eighty-one (81) out of the 100 publications received 295 citations with cumulative h-index of 9 and i10-index of 7. By 2012, 65 out of 100 publications were cited 425 times with h-index of 11 and i10-index of 14 respectively. The h-index of a professor whose name appeared in 82 publications was not calculated. I recorded h-index of 4, disapproving the Google Scholar Citations Help. In 2012, my publications were separated from co-researchers. The publications (45) received 128 citations, h-index of 8 and i10-index of 6. The GSCH gives cumulative h-index of researchers who have worked together and whose names appeared in other papers. Therefore, the Google Scholar Citation Help software should be designed in such a way that it can calculate h-index of individual researcher, instead of calculating cumulative h-index of a group of researchers.