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

We present a 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 assumptions related to the statistical citation patterns in a given field of research.