Association between academic degrees and research productivity: an assessment of Canadian academic general surgeons

Background: For academic hiring committees and surgical trainees, the benefits of a graduate degree are unclear. We sought to identify if graduate degrees or professorship status were associated with increased research productivity among Canadian academic surgeons. Methods: We included general surgeons from the largest hospitals associated with accredited residency programs. We classified staff surgeons active between 2013 and 2018 by degree (MD only, master’s degree, PhD) and professorship (assistant, associate, professor) status. We identified their publications from January 2013 to December 2018. Variables of interest included publications per year, citations per article, journal of publication, CiteScore, author’s Hirsch (h) index and the revised h-index (r-index). We used Kruskal–Wallis tests and the Dunn multiple comparison test to assess statistical significance. Results: We identified 3262 publications from 187 surgeons, including 78 (41.7%) with no graduate degree, 84 (44.9%) with master’s degrees and 25 (13.4%) with PhDs. Surgeons with graduate degrees had more publications per year, higher CiteScores, more citations per article, and higher h- and r-indices than those without graduate degrees. Surgeons with doctorates had the highest median values in all domains, but differences were not significant compared with surgeons with master’s degrees. Seventy-seven (41.8%) surgeons were assistant professors, 63 (34.2%) were associate professors and 44 (23.9%) were full professors. Statistically, full professors had a greater number of publications per year and higher h- and r-indices than their counterparts. Conclusion: Surgeons with graduate degrees or more advanced professorships had the greatest research productivity. Surgeons with doctorates trended toward greater research productivity than those holding master’s degrees.