N. Valsangkar1, J. Kays1, P. Martin1, J. Parett1, M. M. Joshi1, T. A. Zimmers1, L. Koniaris1 1Indiana University School Of Medicine,Department Of Surgery,Indianapolis, IN, USA
Introduction: A core objective of the Society of University Surgeons (SUS) is research focused: to ‘advance the art and science of surgery through original investigation.’ Herein, we sought to determine the current impact of the SUS on surgical academic productivity.
Methods: Individual faculty data for numbers of publications, citations, and NIH funding history were collected for 4,015 surgical faculty at the top 55-NIH funded departments of surgery using SCOPUS, and NIH RePORTer. SUS membership was determined from membership registry data.
Results: Overall, 502 surgical faculty (12.5%) were SUS members and 92.7% were associate or full professors (versus 59% of non-members). Median publications (P) and citations (C) among SUS members were P:112, C:2460 versus P:29, C:467 (p < 0.001). Academic productivity was considerably higher by rank for SUS-members: associate (P:61 vs. 36, C:1199 vs. 591, p < 0.001) and full professors (P:141 vs. 81, C:3537 vs. 1856, p < 0.001). Among full professors, SUS members had much higher rates of any NIH funding (52.6% vs. 26%, p < 0.05) and specifically for R01, P01, and U01 awards (37% vs. 17.7%, p<0.01). SUS members were two times as likely to be serving in divisional leadership or chair positions (23.5% vs. 10.2%, p < 0.05).
Conclusion: SUS society members are academically a highly productive group. These data support the premise that the SUS is meeting its research mission and identify its members as extremely academically productive contributors to research and scholarship in American surgery and medicine.