As the practice of medicine evolves, the healthcare industry is being challenged to improve the quality of patient care, to document those improvements, and to reduce healthcare costs. Academic medical centers have the added responsibility of teaching medical students, house officers and other trainees, and practicing physicians . The faculty at these academic medical centers is expected to do excellent clinical work, teach effectively, and demonstrate scholarship to justify promotion.
Advancing our field through research is an important expectation of academic medical centers, especially those associated with medical schools. But what is the best way to measure the success of each faculty member? Externally funded grants, patents, and the creation of spin-off companies have been suggested, but peer reviewed publications remain the primary measure.
Because there is a wide variation in the quality of published manuscripts, merely counting the number of publications is a poor reflection of the quality of one’s work. In general, the best papers are published in journals with the highest impact factors. Thus, multiplying the number of papers published times the impact factors of the journals in which they are published may give a better assessment of scholarship. However, an author may prefer to publish in a journal with a lower impact factor to reach a specific audience.
In 2005, Jorge Hirsch proposed a new method of assessing an author’s scientific productivity . The Hirsch Index, or h index as it is commonly called, quantifies an investigator’s scientific output in a single number. The h index is the number of published papers that have at least h citations. This method of calculating one’s scientific productivity was quickly accepted and replaced other methods such as the total number of publications, the total number of citations, or the citations per paper.
There are many reports confirming the value of the h index as a measure of scientific productivity. Among radiologists, Rad and colleagues found a significant correlation between the h index and academic rank . Castillo found that senior editors of three leading radiology journals “showed scores of 20 or higher, which are considered to be very good” . In this issue of Academic Radiology , Asnafi et al. show that editorial board members of journals with higher impact factors have a higher h index than editorial board members of lower impact factor journals . These results suggest that more productive investigators are more likely to accept positions on the editorial boards of higher-quality journals, and journals with higher impact factors are more likely to invite productive investigators to serve on their editorial boards. The results are not surprising and support the h index as a measure of scientific productivity.
Although the h index is a useful measure of scientific productivity, it also has flaws . First, it does not consider the order of the authors such that one gets the same citation credit for being a middle author as the first or senior author of the paper. Second, it does not discriminate among the quality of papers citing the article. Third, it rewards longevity. A retired author’s h index continues to rise, even after he or she has stopped contributing to the scientific literature.
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