  The aim of this paper is to review the features, benefits and limitations of
the new scientific evaluation products derived from Google Scholar; Google
Scholar Metrics and Google Scholar Citations, as well as the h-index which is
the standard bibliometric indicator adopted by these services. It also outlines
the potential of this new database as a source for studies in Biomedicine and
compares the h-index obtained by the most relevant journals and researchers in
the field of Intensive Care Medicine, by means of data extracted from Web of
Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Results show that, although average h-index
values in Google Scholar are almost 30% higher than those obtained in Web of
Science and about 15% higher than those collected by Scopus, there are no
substantive changes in the rankings generated from either data source. Despite
some technical problems, it is concluded that Google Scholar is a valid tool
for researchers in Health Sciences, both for purposes of information retrieval
and computation of bibliometric indicators
