Get a quick, honestly labelled h-index estimate for any author.
What this tool does
This tool estimates an author’s h-index from OpenAlex, the free scholarly database. You type an author’s name, the tool finds their OpenAlex record, fetches their most-cited works, and computes the h-index: the largest number h such that the author has h works each cited at least h times. The result is labelled everywhere as an OpenAlex-based estimate, because it is not the official Scopus or Web of Science h-index, which use different, partly paywalled data.
It works fully in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to a server, and you do not need an account. Paste your text, press the button, and read the result on the same page. That makes it useful for students, researchers, and anyone who has to get through a long paper quickly without losing the important parts.
How to use it
Type the author’s full name as it appears on their papers and press the look-up button. Check that the name shown in the result is the right person, because common names collide, and if it is not, try a fuller name or a distinctive middle initial. Read the works-checked count too: an estimate from few works is shakier than one from a long list.
Worked example
Looking up a famous physicist returns a large h-index computed from hundreds of cited works, while looking up an early-career researcher returns a small one from a handful of works. The comparison is instructive only within a field and career stage: h-index grows with time and varies wildly between fields, so a raw number never ranks two researchers from different areas fairly.
How to read the results
The output shows the matched author name, the computed h-index in large text, the number of works checked, and a plain label stating this is an OpenAlex-based estimate, not an official Scopus or Web of Science figure. If the author is not found, or OpenAlex is rate-limited, the tool says so instead of inventing a number.
Do not treat the output as a final answer. It is a starting point for your own reading. Skim the highlighted parts first, then read the full passage around anything that matters for your work. A tool can point at the likely important sentences, but only you can judge whether they are actually important for your question.
Honest limits
OpenAlex data is free and open, but it is not identical to Scopus or Web of Science: coverage, author disambiguation, and citation counts all differ, so this estimate can differ from an official h-index by several points. The tool checks at most the 200 most-cited works returned, and name collisions can attach the wrong record. Never use this estimate alone for hiring, funding, or promotion decisions.
This tool does not use artificial intelligence, and it does not understand your paper the way a human reader does. It follows fixed rules that you can inspect in the results. That is a strength when you want transparent, repeatable results, and a weakness when a passage needs real understanding, context, or judgement.
Tips for best results
Paste clean text. Remove page headers, footers, and reference lists before you paste, because they add noise to word counts and sentence scores. Work on one section at a time for long papers, and keep your original file open beside the tool so you can check anything surprising against the source. If you use the result in your own writing, always cite the original paper, never the tool output.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free? Yes. The tool is free to use online, with no sign-up and no download.
Is my text stored anywhere? No. Everything runs in your browser tab. Closing the tab removes your pasted text.
Can I trust the output completely? No tool of this kind should be trusted blindly. Use it to speed up reading and checking, then verify the important claims yourself in the original text.
Related tools
Versión en español: Buscador de Índice H de Autores · All Free Online Tools.
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