H-index and academic rank in general surgery and surgical specialties in the United States

Abstract

BackgroundH-index serves as an alternative to measure academic achievement. Our objective is to study the h-index as a measure of academic attainment in general surgery and surgical specialties. MethodsA database of all surgical programs in the United States was created. Publish or Perish software was used to determine surgeons h-index. ResultsA total of 134 hospitals and 3712 surgeons (79% male) were included. Overall, mean h-index was 14.9 ± 14.8. H-index increased linearly with academic rank: 6.8 ± 6.4 for assistant professors (n = 1557, 41.9%), 12.9 ± 9.3 for associate professors (n = 891, 24%), and 27.9 ± 17.4 for professors (n = 1170, 31.5%); P < 0.001. Thoracic surgery and surgical oncology had the highest subspecialty mean h-indices (18.7 ± 16.7 and 18.4 ± 17.6, respectively). Surgeons with additional postgraduate degrees, university affiliations and male had higher mean h-indices; P < 0.001. Scatterplot analysis showed a strong correlation between h-index and the number of publications (R2 = 0.817) and citations (R2 = 0.768). ConclusionsThe h-index of academic surgeons correlates with academic rank and serves a potential tool to measure academic productivity.