Differences in Publication Productivity among Medical and Surgical Retina Specialists at Academic Ophthalmology Departments

Abstract

Purpose : Retina is the largest subspecialty within academic ophthalmology, comprising 22.0% of all academic ophthalmologists. This study sought to investigate differences in publication productivity between medical and surgical retina specialists.

Methods : The Penn State College of Medicine Institutional Review Board reviewed the study protocol and determined the study was exempt from further review. This was a cross-sectional study of academic retina specialists identified through review of institutional websites of all 113 US ophthalmology residency training programs accredited by the ACGME. Faculty members were categorized as medical or surgical retina specialists based on academic institutional websites regarding the retina fellowship training they completed. Faculty data on residency graduation year were collected between January-March 2019. The h-index measures a published author’s publication productivity and citation impact, and was obtained for each retina specialist from the Scopus database. The m-quotient adjusts for career duration and was calculated by dividing the h-index by the total number of years between the author’s residency graduation year and 2019. Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests were used to analyze for differences in h-indices and m-quotients between medical and surgical retina specialists.

Results : Among 623 retina specialists identified, 117 (18.8%) were medical specialists and 506 (81.2%) were surgical specialists. Medical and surgical specialists had median career durations of 23.0 (interquartile range (IQR) 20.0) and 19.0 years (IQR 20.0), respectively. Medical specialists had a higher median h-index [14.0 (IQR 28.0) vs. 11.0 (IQR 19.0); P = 0.023] and m-quotient [0.83 (IQR 0.90) vs. 0.64 (IQR 0.75); P = 0.019] than surgical specialists.

Conclusions : There are fewer medical than surgical retina specialists in academia. Medical retina specialists had a higher median publication productivity than their surgical counterparts, even after accounting for career duration.

This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.