Scientometrics
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Feb 18, 2022; 13(2): 201-211
Published online Feb 18, 2022. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v13.i2.201
Assessing the academic achievement of United States orthopaedic departments
Rishi Trikha, Thomas E Olson, Ameen Chaudry, Chad R Ishmael, Cristina Villalpando, Clark J Chen, Kellyn R Hori, Nicholas M Bernthal
Rishi Trikha, Thomas E Olson, Ameen Chaudry, Chad R Ishmael, Cristina Villalpando, Clark J Chen, Kellyn R Hori, Nicholas M Bernthal, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90404, United States
Thomas E Olson, Ameen Chaudry, Cristina Villalpando, Kellyn R Hori, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
Author contributions: The above authors were each included in substantial contributions to research design, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data, drafting the paper or revising it critically, approval of the submitted and final versions.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no financial disclosures or conflicts of interest to report for this work.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Nicholas M Bernthal, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California, 1250 16th St Suite 2100, Los Angeles, CA 90404, United States. nbernthal@mednet.ucla.edu
Received: May 17, 2021
Peer-review started: May 17, 2021
First decision: October 16, 2021
Revised: November 26, 2021
Accepted: January 11, 2022
Article in press: January 11, 2022
Published online: February 18, 2022
Processing time: 276 Days and 11.4 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Orthopaedic surgery faculty are often measured by bibliometric variables that represent their academic productivity such as citation indices, number of publications and amount of research funding.

Research motivation

Assessing academic productivity allows academic departments to identify the strengths of their scholarly contribution and provides an opportunity to evaluate areas for improvement.

Research objectives

To provide objective benchmarks for departments seeking to enhance academic productivity and identify those with improvement in recent past.

Research methods

Our study retrospectively analyzed a cohort of orthopaedic faculty at United States-based academic orthopaedic programs. Variables included for analysis were National Institutes of Health funding (2014-2018), leadership positions in orthopaedic societies (2018), editorial board positions of top orthopaedic journals (2018), total number of publications and Hirsch-index. A weighted algorithm was used to calculate a cumulative score for each academic program.

Research results

The five institutions with the highest cumulative score, in decreasing order, were: Washington University in St. Louis, the Hospital for Special Surgery, Sidney Kimmel Medical College (SKMC) at Thomas Jefferson University, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Brigham and Women’s/Harvard. The five institutions with the highest score per capita, in decreasing order, were: Mayo Clinic (Rochester), Washington University in St. Louis, Rush University, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and MGH/Brigham and Women’s/Harvard. The five academic programs that had the largest improvement in cumulative score from 2013 to 2018, in decreasing order, were: VCU, SKMC at Thomas Jefferson University, UCSF, MGH/Brigham and Women’s/Harvard, and Brown University.

Research conclusions

This algorithm can provide orthopaedic departments a means to assess academic productivity, monitor progress, and identify areas for improvement as they seek to expand their academic contributions to the orthopaedic community.

Research perspectives

The authors would like to reiterate that this is in no way a ranking system as there are many unique challenges that institutions face. We hope that this provides a tool that programs may use to assess and improve their own academic productivity, while simultaneously providing an opportunity to praise the growth and achievement of institutions on a cumulative as well as per capita basis.