Lets not discredit them though. It takes time, cites per document and H-index. First you increase the volume, more people will have access to your work, cites per document will increase, and so will the productivity ,"H-index" of the paper. There is no short cut.
Yes it take time to accumulate citation, citations are per document per years since documents have been published. For example in 2011 Iran has published 38,142 documents, during a period of two years 2011,2012 these document received 47,202 citations, 47,202/38,142=1.2375334277..... Rounded up to 1,24 citation per document for documents which were published only in 2011. H-index is at least H citation per document applied to all documents which have been published by a country throughout all the period(all years since country began to publish), H index will never decline and it even might(most probably) rise(to a fixed value) even if a country X will cease to publish indefinitely.
So yes, H-index is indeed more of an overall quality criterion and need more time to change and it covers not a year's publications but all of them! citation per document per a specific year is more of a precursor of that's year impact on H-index.
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