• Zerubabbel K Asfaw, Roshini Kalagara, Adam Y Li, Theodore C Hannah, Alexander J Schupper, Lily McCarthy, Eugene I Hrabarchuk, Addison Quinones, John R Durbin, Peter F Morgenstern, and Tanvir F Choudhri.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA. Electronic address: zerubabbel.asfaw@icahn.mssm.edu.
• World Neurosurg. 2022 Feb 1; 158: e138-e147.

IntroductionAcademic productivity, a key feature of academic neurosurgery, has been linked to academic rank, subspecialty, and institutional rank. Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) has emerged as a new metric of scholarly output that can make field-normalized comparisons between researchers, a feature unavailable in prior metrics such as h-index. Here we evaluate the influence of academic rank and neurosurgical subspecialties on RCR scores.MethodsWe identified 1640 academic neurosurgeons from 115 ACGME-accredited programs in the United States, along with their neurosurgical specialty and demographic information, using publicly available data. Mean RCR (m-RCR) and weighted RCR (w-RCR) for each neurosurgeon were queried from the iCite database, which included publications from 2002-2020. m-RCR and w-RCR scores were compared across subspecialties and academic rank using multivariable regression while controlling for demographic factors.ResultsMultivariable analysis indicated that academic neurosurgeons in general neurosurgery (P = 0.039) and pediatric neurosurgery (P = 0.003) had lower m-RCR scores than their peers in other subspecialties. w-RCR did not differ significantly among subspecialties. Higher academic rank was associated with increased m-RCR (P < 0.05) and w-RCR scores (P < 0.0001).ConclusionsProfessors have a higher m-RCR score relative to assistant professors, while general and pediatric neurosurgery were linked to lower m-RCR values. Although neurosurgical subspecialty choice did not influence w-RCR, a higher w-RCR score corresponded to a higher academic rank. Overall, the RCR metric can be utilized for field-normalized comparisons of faculty who differ in academic rank and subspecialty.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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