The correlation study of the H-Index and Academic Rank of Researchers in the Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the H-index among researchers of the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO) and to investigate the relationship between their academic rank and bibliographic measures of research productivity.
Methodology: This is a descriptive-applied research that has been carried out using a scientometrics approach. The study population consisted of 2125 faculty members in four categories: professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and instructors. The research organization's scientometrics system was used for data collection and Spearman correlation test was used to investigate the relationship between research variables.
Results: The results showed that from 2125 faculty members 337 (15.86%) were female and 84.14% were male. The number of assistant professors was 1261 (59.34%) that is the highest frequency and only 2.4% of the population are the professors. The study population produced a total of 12734 articles that its 50.14% have been authored by professors and 73.51% by assistant professors. The average citations received were 626.82 for professors’ papers, 113.69 for associate professors’ papers, and 45.3 citations for assistant professors’ papers respectively. Also the mean H-index of the was 9.88 for professors, 4.39 for associate professors, 2.15 for assistant professors, and 0.72 for the instructors. According to the findings, there was a significant relationship between academic rank and three scientometrics indices. In addition, H-index of women was higher than men.
Conclusion: Investigation of the relationship between academic rank and H-index among faculty members of AREEO shows that there is a moderate correlation between them.