Research productivity and impact of Canadian academic ophthalmologists: trends in H-index, gender, subspecialty, and faculty appointment

Objective: H-index has historically functioned as a metric of academic success for acquisition of research grants, awards, and faculty appointments. Our objective was to characterize the landscape of Canadian academic ophthalmology on the basis of research productivity and impact-as measured by H-index-with gender, subspecialty, and faculty appointment.

Design: Cross-sectional study based on data abstracted from publicly available databases.

Participants: Academic ophthalmologists from all schools in Canada with an ophthalmology residency program.

Methods: Academic ophthalmologists and their faculty appointments were identified from university websites. gender was determined from available provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons or ophthalmology society databases. H-indices were collected from Scopus and Web of Science. Descriptive, univariate, and multivariate statistics were used to analyze the relationship of H-index with gender, faculty appointment, and subspecialty.

Results: We included data from 696 academic ophthalmologists. The mean H-indices for lecturers and assistant, associate, and full professors were 4.0 (±5.6), 5.6 (±5.0), 8.8 (±6.3), and 15 (±12), respectively. H-index had a significant positive correlation with faculty appointment (0.521, 95% confidence interval 0.469-0.579, p = 1.77e-41). The mean H-index was 6.7 (±8.2) for women and 8.1(±8.4) for men (p = 0.0635). Women comprised 27% of faculty positions, and men were more likely to have a higher faculty appointment than women (p = 0.0073). The top subspecialties for underrepresentation of women were surgical retina, medical retina, and oculoplastics.

Conclusions: Faculty appointments are associated with research productivity, as measured by H-index. There are significant gender disparities in faculty appointments and subspecialty representation. Future directions include exploring other contributory factors to success in academic ophthalmology.