Is there a place for a mock h-index?

Abstract

The h-index has captured the imagination of scientometricians and bibliometricians to such an extent that one can now divide the history of the subject virtually into a pre-Hirsch and a post-Hirsch period. Beyond its academic value, it is now used as a tool for research assessment of individuals, research faculties and institutions and even for comparing performance of journals and countries. Since its introduction, many Hirsch-type variants have been proposed to overcome perceived limitations of the original index. In this paper, using ideas from mathematical modeling, another mock h-index is proposed which may complement the h-index and give it better resolving power.