The inconsistency of the h‐index

The h‐index is a popular bibliometric indicator for assessing individual scientists. We criticize the h‐index from a theoretical point of view. We argue that for the purpose of measuring the overall scientific impact of a scientist (or some other unit of analysis), the h‐index behaves in a counterintuitive way. In certain cases, the mechanism used by the h‐index to aggregate publication and citation statistics into a single number leads to...