What's wrong with the H-index, according to its inventor | Nature Index

What's wrong with the H-index, according to its inventor | Nature Index

View this email in your browser Friday 27 March 2020

Hello Nature readers, Today we discover that Neanderthals enjoyed a nice bit of fish and some dolphin for dinner, learn why the inventor of the H-index says it can have “severe unintended negative consequences” and hear that the UK prime minister has COVID-19.

Cracked-open and burnt fragments of pincers of the edible crab (Cancer pagurus) (João Zilhão)

Neanderthals loved a fish supper A pile of ancient kitchen rubbish shows Neanderthals had a highly varied diet. Digging in a seaside cave in Portugal, researchers found bones of seals, dolphins and many types of fish, including sharks. The 86,000- to 106,000-year-old remains contribute to showing how Neanderthals’ behaviour — and perhaps their cognitive abilities — were not too different from those of their contemporary modern humans. The cave was so cramped that only a maximum of three people could work inside at any given time. “I was in the fetal position every single day,” says archaeologist Filipa Rodrigues, a coauthor of the study. New York Times | 4 min readReference: Science paper

What’s wrong with the H-index Love it or hate it, the H-index has become one of the most widely used metrics for measuring the productivity and impact of researchers. Jorge Hirsch, who invented it back in 2005, recently admitted that, although he considers the H-index to be among the best objective measures of scientific achievement, it can “fail spectacularly and have severe unintended negative consequences”. Nature Index | 5 min read