An analysis of scholarly productivity in United States academic anaesthesiologists by citation bibliometrics

The h-index is used to evaluate scholarly productivity in academic medicine, but has not been extensively used in anaesthesia. We analysed the publications, citations, citations per publication and h-index from 1996 to date using the Scopus (R) database for 1630 (1120 men, 510 women) for faculty members from 24 randomly selected US academic anaesthesiology departments The median (interquartile range [range]) h-index of US academic anaesthesiologists was 1 [0-5 (0-44)] with 3 [0-18 (0-398)] total publications, 24 [0-187 (0-8515)] total citations, and 5 [0-14 (0-252)] citations per publication. Faculty members in departments with National Institutes of Health funding were more productive than colleagues in departments with little or no government funding. The h-index increased significantly between successive academic ranks concomitant with increases in the number of publications and total citations. Men had higher median h-index than women concomitant with more publications and citations, but the number of citations per publication was similar between groups. Our results suggest that h-index is a reasonable indicator of scholarly productivity in anaesthesia. The results may help comparisons of academic productivity across countries and may be used to assess whether new initiatives designed to reverse recent declines in academic anaesthetic are working.