Sensitivity of the H-Index to the Retrospective Exclusion of Sources Absent from a Contemporary SCImago Snapshot: Evidence from Highly Cited Authors in Business, Management and Accounting

The H-index is widely used to assess scientific productivity and citation impact, yet its sensitivity to longitudinal changes in database coverage remains uncertain. This study examined how retrospectively excluding publications linked to historically recorded SCImago sources absent from the 2025 annual snapshot affects author-level H-index values. A bibliometric design integrated Scopus and SCImago records for 2000–2025, covering 222 highly visible authors in Business, Management and Accounting, 30,271 Scopus-indexed publications attributable to these authors within the analytical period, and 75,182 unique SCImago source identifiers. Three nested deletion scenarios were evaluated: confirmed discontinuations only, confirmed discontinuations plus ceased publications, and all snapshot-absent sources. The broadest scenario removed 3.47% of the analyzed publications and 0.71% of the citations in the fixed Scopus bibliometric baseline. H-index loss occurred for 1.35%, 2.70%, and 5.41% of authors across the three scenarios, respectively. Under the broadest scenario, only 54 authors (24.32%) had snapshot-absent publications in their baseline h-core, and 12 experienced actual loss. Threshold redundancy, rather than citation distance alone, best explained whether h-core exposure translated into H-index reduction. The findings indicate low, structurally conditioned sensitivity within this purposive sample and should not be interpreted as the operational effect of Scopus source discontinuation.