The positive association of Association for Academic Surgery membership with academic productivity.

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the academic productivity and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of members of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS). METHODS: Academic metrics including, numbers of publications, citations, and NIH funding history were determined for 4015 surgical faculty at the top 55 NIH-funded departments of surgery, using Scopus, NIH RePORT, and the Grantome online databases. RESULTS: AAS membership included 20.5% (824) of all 4015 surgical faculty in this database. For members of the AAS, publications (P) ± standard deviation and citations (C) ± SD were P: 54 ± 96 and C: 985 ± 3321, compared with P: 31 ± 92, C: 528 ± 3001 for nonmembers, P < 0.001. Higher academic productivity among AAS members was observed across all subspecialty types and was especially pronounced for assistant and associate professors. AAS membership was also associated with increased rates of NIH funding and better productivity for equally funded surgical faculty compared with nonmembers. Analysis of AAS membership by subspecialty revealed that AAS members were most commonly general surgery faculty (57.8%); however, only 7.4% of the faculty was affiliated with cardiothoracic surgery. There was also a lack of dedicated science and/or research faculty (0.6% versus 3.4%) among the members of the AAS. CONCLUSIONS: AAS membership appears to be correlated with greater academic performance among junior and midlevel surgical faculty. This improvement is observed regardless of subspecialty. Increased participation of faculty within subspecialties such as cardiothoracic surgery and, a greater focus on increasing the numbers of dedicated research faculty within the AAS may help increase the scientific impact and productivity among members of the society.

The impact of members of the Society of University Surgeons on the scholarship of American surgery.

BACKGROUND: A core objective of the Society of University Surgeons (SUS) is research focused: to "advance the art and science of surgery through original investigation." This study sought to determine the current impact of the SUS on academic surgical productivity. METHODS: Individual faculty data for numbers of publications, citations, and National Institute of Health (NIH) funding history were collected for 4,015 surgical faculty at the top 55 NIH-funded departments of surgery using SCOPUS and the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools. SUS membership was determined from membership registry data. RESULTS: Overall, 502 surgical faculty (12.5%) were SUS members with 92.7% holding positions of associate or full professor (versus 59% of nonmembers). Median publications (P) and citations (C) among SUS members were P: 112, C: 2,460 versus P: 29, C: 467 for nonmembers (P < .001). Academic productivity was considerably higher by rank for SUS members than for nonmembers: associate professors (P: 61 vs 36, C: 1,199 vs 591, P < .001) and full professors (P: 141 vs 81, C: 3,537 vs 1,856, P < .001). Among full professors, SUS members had much higher rates of NIH funding than did nonmembers (52.6% vs 26%, P < .05) and specifically for R01, P01, and U01 awards (37% vs 17.7%, P < .01). SUS members were 2 times more likely to serve in divisional leadership or chair positions (23.5% vs 10.2%, P < .05). CONCLUSION: SUS society members are a highly productive academic group. These data support the premise that the SUS is meeting its research mission and identify its members as very academically productive contributors to research and scholarship in American surgery and medicine.