Influence of adding or deleting items and sources on the h-index

Abstract

Adding or deleting items such as self-citations has an influence on the h-index of an author. This influence will be proved mathematically in this article. We hereby prove the experimental finding in E. Gianoli and M.A. Molina-Montenegro ([2009]) that the influence of adding or deleting self-citations on the h-index is greater for low values of the h-index. Why this is logical also is shown by a simple theoretical example. Adding or deleting sources such as adding or deleting minor contributions of an author also has an influence on the h-index of this author; this influence is modeled in this article. This model explains some practical examples found in X. Hu, R. Rousseau, and J. Chen (in press).