What is a good h-index in Social Sciences (field)?
Percentiles of the h-index among 759,881 ranked researchers in Social Sciences (field), and where any h-index stands. All fields.
What is a good h-index in Social Sciences (field)?
In Social Sciences (field), among 759,881 ranked researchers, the median h-index is 4. An h-index of 14 is at the 90th percentile and 35 at the 99th. The median across all fields is 10, so Social Sciences (field) sits below the overall median (4 against 10).
- 50thpercentile (the median) 4 h-index
- 75thpercentile 8 h-index
- 90thpercentile 14 h-index
- 95thpercentile 19 h-index
- 99thpercentile 35 h-index
Check an h-index
Every figure is the h-index OpenAlex holds for the researcher (author snapshot of 2026-09-23), compared with the 7,710,434 researchers Science Explorer ranks. Each is counted once in a field and once in a subfield, where they have the most papers. Career length is not recorded, and an h-index grows with years of publishing. Which h-index, and who is compared.
H-index in the subfields of Social Sciences
Social Sciences has 22 subfields with enough ranked researchers to compare. Each researcher is counted in the subfield where they have the most papers.
| Subfield | Researchers | Median | 90th | 99th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropology | 16,635 | 5 | 16 | 37 |
| Archeology (Social Sciences) | 136 | 7 | 15 | 27 |
| Communication | 7,947 | 6 | 18 | 39 |
| Cultural Studies | 9,148 | 3 | 8 | 18 |
| Demography | 10,009 | 4 | 12 | 32 |
| Development | 2,288 | 4 | 9 | 21 |
| Education | 187,319 | 5 | 13 | 32 |
| Gender Studies | 5,931 | 8 | 20 | 44 |
| General Social Sciences | 2,222 | 3 | 7 | 13 |
| Geography, Planning and Development | 4,548 | 5 | 15 | 36 |
| Health | 3,616 | 10 | 26 | 63 |
| Human Factors and Ergonomics | 337 | 4 | 12 | 29 |
| Law | 24,364 | 3 | 8 | 22 |
| Library and Information Sciences | 2,271 | 5 | 11 | 23 |
| Life-span and Life-course Studies | 477 | 4 | 9 | 19 |
| Linguistics and Language | 3,785 | 4 | 15 | 37 |
| Political Science and International Relations | 96,203 | 4 | 13 | 32 |
| Public Administration | 1,755 | 8 | 22 | 43 |
| Safety Research | 3,986 | 7 | 20 | 48 |
| Sociology and Political Science | 271,131 | 5 | 16 | 38 |
| Transportation | 24,479 | 2 | 14 | 40 |
| Urban Studies | 8,628 | 4 | 12 | 29 |
More on Social Sciences
- Social Sciences: leading countries, institutions and researchers
- The most cited researchers in Social Sciences
- What a good h-index is in every field
H-index by field
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- Arts and Humanities
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- Business, Management and Accounting
- Chemical Engineering
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Decision Sciences
- Dentistry
- Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance
- Energy
- Engineering
- Environmental Science
- Health Professions
- Immunology and Microbiology
- Materials Science
- Mathematics
- Medicine
- Neuroscience
- Nursing
- Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
- Physics and Astronomy
- Psychology
- Veterinary
Questions about the h-index in Social Sciences (field)
- What is a good h-index in Social Sciences (field)?
- In Social Sciences (field), among 759,881 ranked researchers, the median h-index is 4. An h-index of 14 is at the 90th percentile and 35 at the 99th. The median across all fields is 10, so Social Sciences (field) sits below the overall median (4 against 10).
- What is the average h-index in Social Sciences (field)?
- The median h-index of 759,881 ranked researchers in Social Sciences (field) is 4 and the mean is 6.5.
- What h-index is in the top 10% in Social Sciences (field)?
- An h-index of 14 is at the 90th percentile in Social Sciences (field), and 19 at the 95th.