Publication activity of academic surgery and anesthesiology in Germany. A comparative study over 10 years

Objective: The publication activities of chief and senior physicians of different surgical disciplines in German university hospitals are presented in a comparative literature review. The performance in vascular surgery is questioned. Method: The publication performance of the management teams of 38 university departments for general and visceral surgery, 39 university departments for orthopedic surgery, 33 university departments for cardiac surgery, 40 university departments for neurosurgery and 39 university departments for anesthesiology and vascular surgery in 37 university hospitals was determined. The observation period was 10 years. A total of 226 departments with 2849 chief and senior physicians were recorded. The total number of publications was 19,461. Results: The highest number of publications per staff member was registered in visceral surgery (10.6) and the lowest in anesthesiology (3.5). Serious differences between high and low publication departments were seen in all disciplines. Vascular surgery performed significantly less favorably with 59.6% of the staff publishing than e.g., neurosurgery (83.5%) and visceral surgery (79.4%). The cumulative impact factors (CIF) per staff member made the differences even clearer. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates a significant discrepancy in the publication activity of the departments analyzed, which applied equally to all disciplines and can only be explained by a different research motivation. In terms of publishing activity, vascular surgery is in the lower half of the disciplines analyzed but this is solely due to the low publishing activity of the subordinate organizational structures.