University at Buffalo (UB)
Neurosurgery Department Ranks Seventh in North America in Publications
L. Nelson Hopkins, MD, chair of UB neurosurgery, is pleased that the department is being recognized for its academic productivity.
Published September 7, 2010 This content is archived.
The Department of Neurosurgery is ranked seventh in North America in academic impact in that specialty, based on an analysis of 25 neurosurgery and neurology journals published in the September issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
The report is the first systemic ranking of scholarly activity in neurosurgery.
Authors Francisco Ponce, MD, from Barrow Neurological Institute, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Ariz., and Andres Lozano, MD, PhD, from the University of Toronto, analyzed the academic impact of 99 neurosurgery departments with residency programs that participate in the U.S. National Residency Matching program, and 14 comparable Canadian programs.
They ranked the publications from the 25 journals in three categories: no time limit; between 2000-2009; and between 2000-2009 in Neurosurgery and the Journal of Neurosurgery, the two primary North American neurosurgery journals.
Michael E. Cain, MD, dean of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said in congratulating the department on the rating: “The analysis conducted by Ponce and Lozano ranks the UB Department of Neurosurgery in the top 10 academic departments in North America. This recognition represents substantial achievement, and reaffirms that the department is an outstanding academic enterprise.”
“It is very satisfying to see us ranking above the traditional academic strongholds like Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Johns Hopkins,” said L. Nelson Hopkins, MD, chair of neurosurgery. “Our department is becoming a ‘go to’ place, especially for vascular neurosurgery.”
The neurosurgery departments rated one to six are: University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, University of California at San Francisco, University of Toronto, Mayo Clinic-Rochester and UCLA.
Hopkins pointed out that the centers with more publications than UB have two to three times as many neurosurgeons as UB, along with many more basic scientists in their neurosurgery departments.
“Our department’s academic productivity has exploded in the last decade,” he said. “We’ve produced about 50 publications per year in the past two years, so our ranking will continue to climb.” The department published 218 articles in peer-review journals during the past five years, including but not restricted to the journals analyzed in the Ponce-Lozano article.
The study authors note that the rankings likely will be of interest to prospective residents, faculty and administrators, as well as rating bodies and charitable institutions.