Academic productivity and contributions to the literature among spine surgery fellowship faculty

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: No previous study has considered academic productivity and contributions to the literature among the faculty members of spine fellowship programs. PURPOSE: We sought to evaluate the total number of publications and measures of academic impact among faculty at spine surgical fellowship programs between 2011 and the present. STUDY DESIGN: This study is based on a review of data publicly available on PubMed and Scopus. PATIENT SAMPLE: Physicians listed as faculty at a spine fellowship program in the directory of the North American Spine Society (NASS). OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcome measures were the number of publications between January 1, 2011 and August 31, 2014 and the h-index for 1996 to present (h-tot) and 2011 to present (h-pres) for faculty members. METHODS: Fellowship programs and their characteristics were obtained from the directory of the NASS. Program-specific features, including academic affiliation, number of participating faculty, location, number of fellowship positions, dedicated research time, and presence of a research requirement for fellows, were abstracted. The number of publications for faculty at each program between January 1, 2011 and August 31, 2014 and the h-tot and h-pres were obtained from Scopus. Multivariable linear regression was used to identify statistically significant factors associated with increased academic productivity. RESULTS: Among 75 fellowship programs, with 282 faculty members, there were 55 (73%) with academic affiliation. The average number of publications per faculty member (2011-2014) was 5.5 (standard deviation, 8.4; range, 0-54). The mean h-tot for programs was 13.6 (8.7, 0-37), and mean h-pres was 3.0 (2.2, 0-8.2). Academic affiliation (regression coefficient, 22.1; 95% confidence interval: 7.2, 37.0), and the number of fellows in a program (7.0, 0.9-13.2) was significantly associated with the total number of publications. Similar findings were encountered for average h-tot and h-pres. CONCLUSIONS: The descriptive statistics presented can help surgeons benchmark their performance and that of their fellowship, compared with others in the field. Determinations regarding characteristics associated with academic productivity may also help programs' fashion future strategic initiatives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.