This study aimed to analyze the H-index, a marker of academic productivity, of plastic surgeons in the United States. It found that plastic surgeons who received NIH funding had significantly higher average H-indices than those who did not. H-index increased with higher faculty rank. The top 3 plastic surgery training programs producing the most academic faculty members were NYU-affiliated, Johns Hopkins, and University of Pittsburgh, who also had the highest average H-indices of their surgeons. Programs with the lowest average H-indices were GRMEP/MSU.

1. The H-index as a marker for
productivity among academic
plastic surgeons in the United
States
Anne Tong

2. • Currently, there are 125 ACGME accredited
plastic surgery training programs in the country.
• Application for academic faculty positions remain
a strongly competitive field.
• Scholarly productivity is perceived as a crucial
pre-requisite to compete for faculty positions.
• Keeping track of productivity in research output
continues to be one of the attributes of
promotion within the academic faculty.

3. • Traditionally, the determinant of academic
productivitiy relies on the number of
publication yield for each applicant.
• This, however, does not provide a strong
indication about the quality or the citation
index of publications.
• Recently, the Hirsch(H) index has emerged as
an acceptable indicator for academic
productivity.

4. • The H-index was first developed in 2005 by
Hirsch(JE Hirsch 2005).
• The H-index takes 2 things into account of its
calculation, that is the number of publications
and number of citations of each paper .
• If an author has a H-index of 20, this means that
20 of his/her publications has been cited 20
times.
• If the author has 38 articles, it means the other
18 articles were cited (h) times less (in this case,
less than 20 times).

5. • In this study, the purpose is 4-fold
• To determine the top 3 plastic surgery training
programs that produced the highest number academic
faculty members and aim to compare the average H
indices of surgeons trained from respective institutions
• To determine if there was a relationship between H-
indices and the amount of funding received by the
National Institute of Health (NIH) received per plastic
surgeon.
• To determine the academic institutions with the
highest average of H-index.

6. Methods
• FREIDA Online® (https://freida.ama-assn.org)
to identify for all ACGME-accredited plastic
surgery training programs.
• A total of 125 programs ( 53 integrated + x
independent ) were found.
• Plastic surgeons were included for this study if
they (i) held full-time faculty appointment and
(ii) have been board certified by the American
Board of Plastic Surgery(ABPS).

7. • Information on the following profile were
obtained for each academic plastic surgeon
• medical school attended
• training in plastic surgery
• Faculty rank profile (Assistant Professor, Associate
Professor, Professor)
• Declared subspecialty of interest (Breast,
Aesthetics, Craniofacial, Transplant, Facial
Reanimation, Surgical Oncology, Hand Surgery,
Complex wound healing, Upper/ Lower Extremity
Reconstruction).

8. Methods
• We used 2 proprietary bibliometric databases
to identify for H-indices, namely SciVerse’s
Scopus and Thomson Reuter’s Web of
Science.

9. Results
• Of all faculty members, only 31(x%) were
reported to have received NIH funding.
• The average H index of NIH funded faculty
members were 21.25 ±7.23 in Scopus and
21.81 ±14.57 in WoS.
• Average H index of non-funded faculty
members were 6.46 ± 6.04 and 6.33 ± 6.1 in
Scopus and WoS respectively.

10. H indices based on NIH funding recipients
Scopus WOS
Funded (n=16) 21.25 ± 7.23 21.81 ± 14.57
Not funded(n=491) 6.46 ± 6.04 6.33 ± 6.1

11. H index in scopus based on NIH
funding recipient
0 = not funded
1 = funded

12. H index in scopus based on faculty
rank
FacultyRankingandH-indices
Assistant professor Associate Professor Professor
Scopus WOS Scopus WOS Scopus WOS
Mean±Standard
Deviation 4.234 ± 3.983 3.964 ± 3.62 8.943 ± 5.71 7.864 ± 5.29 12.268 ± 7.81 13.024 ± 9.38

13. 1 = Professor
2 = Associate Professor
3=Assistant Professor

14. NYU
1) JHU
2) UPittsburg
3) GRMEP/MSU
4) UCSF
5) UPenn
6) Foreign-traine

15. Average H index of Plastic Surgery Training Programs Yielding Highest Number of Academic Plastic Surgeons
Institution (n=number of surgeons) Scopus Web of Science
NYU-Affiliated(n=28) 10.536 ± 8.63 12.071 ± 10.68
Johns Hopkins (n=24) 9.042 ± 7.27 8.083 ± 8
University of Pittsburgh(n=17) 7.142 ± 5.16 6.882 ± 5.521
GRMEP/MSU (n=14) 3.13 ± 5.18 3.73 ± 5.23
UCSF(n=14) 8.21 ± 5.88 7.57 ± 3.78
Upenn(n=14) 8.93 ± 5.76 8.43 ± 5.91
Foreign-trained (n=29) 8.793 ± 8.62 9.59 ± 11.44

16. Average H index of Plastic Surgery Training Programs Yielding
Highest Number of Academic Plastic Surgeons
1) NYU-affiliated
2) Hopkins
3) Pittsburgh
4) GRMEP/MSU
5) UCSF