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

Abstract

ObjectiveDetermine drivers of academic productivity within U.S. departments of surgery.MethodsEighty academic metrics for 3,850 faculty at the top 50 NIH-funded university- and 5 outstanding hospital-based surgical departments were collected using websites, Scopus, and NIH RePORTER.ResultsMean faculty size was 76. Overall, there were 35.3% assistant, 27.8% associate, and 36.9% full professors. Women comprised 21.8%; 4.9% were MD-PhDs and 6.1% PhDs. By faculty-rank, median publications/citations were: assistant, 14/175, associate, 39/649 and full-professor, 97/2250. General surgery divisions contributed the most publications and citations. Highest performing sub-specialties per faculty member were: research (58/1683), transplantation (51/1067), oncology (41/777), and cardiothoracic surgery (48/860). Overall, 23.5% of faculty were principal investigators for a current or former NIH grant, 9.5% for a current or former R01/U01/P01. The 10 most cited faculty (MCF) within each department contributed to 42% of all publications and 55% of all citations. MCF were most commonly general (25%), oncology (19%), or transplant surgeons (15%). Fifty-one-percent of MCF had current/former NIH funding, compared with 20% of the rest (p<0.05); funding rates for R01/U01/P01 grants was 25.1% vs. 6.8% (p<0.05). Rate of current-NIH MCF funding correlated with higher total departmental NIH rank (p < 0.05).ConclusionsDepartmental academic productivity as defined by citations and NIH funding is highly driven by sections or divisions of research, general and transplantation surgery. MCF, regardless of subspecialty, contribute disproportionally to major grants and publications. Approaches that attract, develop, and retain funded MCF may be associated with dramatic increases in total departmental citations and NIH-funding.

Academic Surgical Oncologists’ Productivity Correlates with Gender, Grant Funding, and Institutional NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Affiliation

“…3 Valsangkar et al found that the presence of a PhD degree significantly correlated with increased publications and citations for assistant professors ( p < 0.001), associate professors ( p < 0.001), and professors ( p < 0.05). 3 The same study also determined that history of NIH funding significantly correlated with increased academic productivity. 3 Our results also show that the number of NIH grants was significantly associated with h-index.…”

“…1–3 Traditionally, scientific eminence has been quantified by total publication or citation count. However, these cumulative metrics do not sufficiently evaluate the quality of one’s scholarly output.…”

The impact of members of the Society of University Surgeons on the scholarship of American surgery

“…It is well established that the number of publications and citations correlate with academic rank and this has been shown in multiple specialties including General Surgery, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Urology, and Anesthesia [10,[21][22][23][24]. Here it is demonstrated that membership in an academic surgical society, the SUS, is also correlated with an increased number of publications and citations.…”

“…While not exhaustive, some data do exist on the metrics between different departments within medical schools [9]. The authors of this study have previously demonstrated within academic surgical departments, scholarly productivity is driven by divisions of research, general surgery, and transplant surgery [10].…”

“…It has been shown that academic productivity within a department of surgery is highly driven by the divisions of General Surgery, Transplant Surgery, and Research [10]. When controlled for division, SUS members are, for the most part, equally represented among the different divisions, with the exceptions being Plastic Surgery and Science and Research.…”