An analysis of publication productivity for 1225 academic neurosurgeons and 99 departments in the United States

Abstract

Object Bibliometrics is defined as the study of statistical and mathematical methods used to quantitatively analyze scientific literature. The application of bibliometrics in neurosurgery is in its infancy. The authors calculate a number of publication productivity measures for almost all academic neurosurgeons and departments within the US. Methods The h-index, g-index, m-quotient, and contemporary h-index (hc-index) were calculated for 1225 academic neurosurgeons in 99 (of 101) programs listed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in January 2013. Three currently available citation databases were used: Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. Bibliometric profiles were created for each surgeon. Comparisons based on academic rank (that is, chairperson, professor, associate, assistant, and instructor), sex, and subspecialties were performed. Departments were ranked based on the summation of individual faculty h-indices. Calculations were carried out from January to February 2013. Results The median h-index, g-index, hc-index, and m-quotient were 11, 20, 8, and 0.62, respectively. All indices demonstrated a positive relationship with increasing academic rank (p < 0.001). The median h-index was 11 for males (n = 1144) and 8 for females (n = 81). The h-index, g-index and hc-index significantly varied by sex (p < 0.001). However, when corrected for academic rank, this difference was no longer significant. There was no difference in the m-quotient by sex. Neurosurgeons with subspecialties in functional/epilepsy, peripheral nerve, radiosurgery, neuro-oncology/skull base, and vascular have the highest median h-indices; general, pediatric, and spine neurosurgeons have the lowest median h-indices. By summing the manually calculated Scopus h-indices of all individuals within a department, the top 5 programs for publication productivity are University of California, San Francisco; Barrow Neurological Institute; Johns Hopkins University; University of Pittsburgh; and University of California, Los Angeles. Conclusions This study represents the most detailed publication analysis of academic neurosurgeons and their programs to date. The results for the metrics presented should be viewed as benchmarks for comparison purposes. It is our hope that organized neurosurgery will adopt and continue to refine bibliometric profiling of individuals and departments.

An application of Bradford’s law: identification of the core journals of pediatric neurosurgery and a regional comparison of citation density

“…We chose the second methodology to adequately include those journals that, although unconventional, may contain high-impact articles. The publication history of the top 25 North American pediatric neurosurgeons was chosen based on the h-index because the h-index is a measure of career productivity, and as such, these clinicians have a proven track record of highimpact articles [17,20]. A 5-year publication history of the top 25 neurosurgeons was chosen to provide an adequate and current sample of references from which to draw meaningful conclusions.…”

“…We recently created publication productivity profiles of nearly all academic neurosurgeons in the USA [17]. These bibliometric indices-the h-index in particular-have been widely applied to neurosurgery [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…These bibliometric indices-the h-index in particular-have been widely applied to neurosurgery [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Using this database, we identified the 25 top-ranked North American pediatric neurosurgeons based on the manually calculated h-index from Scopus (Elsevier, www.scopus.com) [17]. By sampling the journal articles referenced by those pediatric neurosurgeons over a 5-year period (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) and applying Bradford's law, we identified the core journals of pediatric neurosurgery.…”

Publication Productivity Pattern of Malaysian Researchers in Scopus from 1995 to 2015

“…[32,33] Besides the regular terminologies of bibliometric which usually appears in papers and articles, there are another term which represent the same environment namely as citation indexing, [34] informetric, [35] altmetric, [36] scientometric [16] and webometric. [37] Each of terminologies has its own uniqueness in adapt the research situation.…”

Determining the Drivers of Academic Success in Surgery: An Analysis of 3,850 Faculty

“…However, to date, little work has been done to determine metrics of faculty academic productivity within specific disciplines. At present, limited examinations focused mostly on publications and citations have been reported in subsets of physicians in relatively few specialties [18][19][20] [21,22] [23,24] [20,25] [ 20,26]. To date, no such examination has been done within the field of surgery.…”