Relative Value of Adapted Novel Bibliometrics in Evaluating Surgical Academic Impact and Reach

Background The Hirsch index, often used to assess research impact, suffers from questionable validity within the context of General Surgery, and consequently adapted bibliometrics and altmetrics have emerged, including the r-index, m-index, g-index and i10-index. This study aimed to assess the relative value of these novel bibliometrics in a single UK Deanery General Surgical Consultant cohort. Method Five indices (h, r, m, g and i10) and altmetric scores (AS) were calculated for 151 general surgical consultants in a UK Deanery. Indices and AS were calculated from publication data via the Scopus search engine with assessment of construct validity and reliability. Results The median number of publications, h-index, r-index, m-index, g-index and i10-index were 13 (range 0–389), 5 (range 0–63), 5.2 (range 0–64.8), 0.33 (range 0–1.5), 10 (range 0–125) and 4 (range 0–245), respectively. Correlation coefficients of r-index, m-index, g-index and i10-index with h-index were 0.913 ( p