The influence of missing publications on the Hirsch index

We show that usually the influence on the Hirsch index of missing highly cited articles is much smaller than the number of missing articles. This statement is shown by a combinatorial argument. We further show, by using a continuous power law model, that the influence of missing articles is largest when the total number of publications is small, and non-existing when the number of publications is very large. The same conclusion can be drawn for missing citations. Hence, the h-index is resilient to missing articles and to missing citations. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.