Rhinology Fellowship Training and its Scholarly Impact

Abstract

Background Previous examination of the impact of fellowship training on scholarly productivity among otolaryngologists found that head and neck surgeons and otologists had a higher mean h–index than fellowship-trained rhinologists. Because fellowship training in rhinology is a historically newer trend, the objectives of the present analysis were to further characterize research productivity among fellowship-trained academic rhinologists, including geographic and temporal trends, to gain insight into the future direction of scholarly pursuits within the field. Methods Fellowship-trained rhinologists in academic practices were identified from the American Rhinologic Society online listings and organized by academic rank, number of years in practice, location, and h-index, as calculated using the Scopus database. Results Mean h-index rose with increasing years in practice after fellowship. The h-index, number of publications, and the E-factor (a newly described bibliometric) increased with successive academic rank. The E-factor for rhinologists in this current analysis was not statistically different from the values calculated for other otolaryngology subspecialties (p > 0.05). Conclusion Fellowship-training in rhinology is a relatively recent development, with half of the academic rhinologists included in this analysis having completed fellowship training within the past 5 years. Scholarly productivity among academic rhinologists increases with academic seniority. As the current cohort of fellowship-trained rhinologists progress in their academic careers, previously described deficits in scholarly productivity relative to other subspecialties are expected to diminish.