Progression of Citation-Based Scholarly Activity from Postgraduate Year One to Postgraduate Year Two in a Current Radiation Oncology Resident Class

Abstract

Recent work has demonstrated multiple measures of citation-based scholarly activity. Measures including Hirsch index (h-index), h-index limited to first-author manuscripts (hf), h-index limited to first or second-author only manuscripts (hs), and g-index have been associated with radiation oncology resident choice of academic versus private practice career. To date, there has been no evaluation of the progression of citation-based scholarly activity during residency. A list of radiation oncology residents from the graduating class of 2022 (PGY-2 academic year of 2018-2019) was obtained through internet investigation. Citation-based scholarly activity was collected and calculated from searches of the SCOPUS bibliometric citation database for h-index, hf, hs, and g-indices for each resident as previously described. Calculations were derived in June 2018 for the PGY-1 year, and in June 2019 for the PGY-2 year. Fisher’s exact test was used for statistical analysis. Analysis of 195 residents from the 2022 class revealed that the citation-based scholarly activity significantly increased from PGY-1 to PGY-2 for h-index (2.59 to 3.23; p=0.047) and g-index (4.03 to 5.13; p=0.045), but not for hf (1.03 to 1.28; p=0.169) or hs (1.48 to 1.88; p=0.0654). From the PGY-1 to PGY-2 year, the proportion of residents with hf of zero (no cited articles as first author) decreased from 43.6% to 38.5%, as did the proportion of residents with hs of zero (no cited articles as first or second author) from 32.3% to 26.7%. Underrepresented minority race/ethnicity (African-American/Hispanic) did not impact the significance of the h-index and g-index findings. From the PGY-1 to PGY-2 academic year, radiation oncology residents significantly increased in citation-based academic productivity, with an increase in the proportion of residents with a cited first-or-second author manuscript. Further study is necessary to determine how this trend persists in future years.