The Citationless h-index: Concerning a Heuristic Point of View Toward Hirsch's Index

In this conference contribution we present a preliminary heuristic approach towards estimating a scholar’s h-index even when her citation record is incomplete. A citation-less h-index may sound as a contradiction in terms, but given the mathematical methodologies of bibliometrics and citation analyse in particular, the quantitative entities usually employed are governed by formal relations that in principle makes it possible to calculate an h-index based
on assumption.

Background:
Ideally, calculating a scholar’s h-index with any confidence is possible if her citable publications are indexed correctly and exhaustively, and that the same is true for all potentially citing publications. However, no database meets these criteria and consequently the h-index for a scholar depends on the source.

We test our model against publication data from different research departments and find a good agreement, which allows us to arrive at a disciplinary parameterization ultimately allowing us to predict the expected h-index of a scholar within any of these disciplines, knowing only their total number of publications.