Gender Disparities in Scholarly Productivity within Academic Otolaryngology Departments

Abstract

Objective. To examine whether there are gender disparities in scholarly productivity within academic otolaryngology departments, as measured by academic rank and the h-index, a published, objective measure of research contributions that quantifies the number and significance of papers published by a given author.Study Design and Setting. Analysis of bibliometric data of academic otolaryngologists.Methods. Faculty listings from academic otolaryngology departments were used to determine academic rank and gender. The Scopus database was used to determine h-index and publication range (in years) of these faculty members. In addition, 20 randomly chosen institutions were used to compare academic otolaryngologists to faculty members in other surgical specialties.Results. Mean h-indices increased through the rank of professor. Among academic otolaryngologists, men had significantly higher h-indices than women, a finding also noted on examination of faculty members from other specialties. Men had higher research productivity rates at earlier points in their career than women did. The productivity rates of women increased and equaled or surpassed those of men later in their careers. Men had higher absolute h-index values at junior academic ranks. Women academic otolaryngologists of senior rank had higher absolute h-indices than their male counterparts.Conclusions. The h-index measures research significance in an objective manner and indicates that although men have higher overall research productivity in academic otolaryngology, women demonstrate a different productivity curve. Women produce less research output earlier in their careers than men do, but at senior levels, they equal or exceed the research productivity of men. Keywordsgender, gender disparity, h-index, academic promotion, academic productivity, faculty productivity, surgical faculty productivity, academic physician scientific productivity, academic rank determination, academic rank in surgical specialties Received July 13, 2012; revised September 19, 2012; accepted October 8, 2012. T he proportion of women pursuing careers in medicine has dramatically increased, as women now comprise nearly half of US medical students.1-6 Although this trend is consistent with societal strides in gender equality, further examination among specific medical disciplines reveals notable demographic differences. Women have disproportionately entered primary care and nonsurgical careers, while surgical specialties have traditionally had difficulty recruiting and retaining female trainees. 3,[7][8][9] In addition, women are underrepresented in academic practice

Academic characteristics for successful national institutes of health funding in dermatology

“…Results show this had no influence on success. This is consistent with studies done for the orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, and ophthalmology departments [6,8,17]. These studies likewise found that the mean H-index of NIH-funded faculty whose terminal degree was an MD (or MD equivalent) was not statistically different than colleagues with PhDs or both MD and PhD degrees.…”

“…Further doi: 10.15761/GOD.1000181 Volume 3 (3): 311-314 difficult time training and recruiting females [6]. Despite the more equal representation of females and males in dermatology, the number of females who receive NIH funding is far less.…”

“…Several studies have used NIH funding as a marker of success [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. NIH funding strengthens academic departments by allowing the department to invest funding into long-term development, hire extra faculty, and increase research productivity.…”

Assessing National Institutes of Health funding and scholarly impact in neurological surgery

“…These issues and other potential limitations of the h index have been widely reported in the literature. 3,7,9,10,[12][13][14][15]18,23,25,26,[28][29][30]35,[39][40][41] Despite these known limitations, the h index is an objective measure that takes into account the frequency with which a faculty member has had an impact upon scholarly discourse within a field and has been shown in many analyses to have a strong association with academic promotion, receiving external funding, graduate medical education, and a variety of other factors measuring achievement.…”

“…The h index is a bibliometric whose use has been previously described among academic physicians in neurological surgery as well as in other specialties. 6,7,9,10,12,21,[23][24][25][26][27]29,31,32,[35][36][37][38][39][40] It has been shown to have a strong association with scholarly impact, academic advancement, National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding procurement, and other measures of scholarly productivity. It is a widely accessible and easily calculable measure that indicates the degree to which an author is frequently cited on a regular basis, throughout his or her body of work (rather than disproportionate citation of a single work).…”