The Positive Association of AAS membership with Academic Productivity

Abstract Objectives To evaluate the academic productivity and 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 4,015 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 4,015 surgical faculty in this database. For members of the AAS, publications (P) ± SD (standard deviation) and citations (C) ± SD were P: 54±96 and C: 985±3321, compared with P: 31±92, C: 528±3001 for non members, 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 non-members. 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 were affiliated with cardiothoracic surgery. There was also a lack of dedicated science/research faculty (0.6% vs. 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.