Creativity in Neurosurgical Publications

The publications of 50 of the first American neurosurgeons were studied, and a citation analysis was done for the period 1965 through 1979. Because creative authors and their papers influence the scholarship and technical course of a discipline such as neurosurgery, the number of citations to an author or publication is a good measure of creativity (the production of original ideas that are lasting and eminent). The 10 authors who had the largest number of citations of papers, chapters, and books were Penfield (3228), Cushing (2588), Dandy (1732), Bailey (1061), White (968), Matson (932), Ingraham (651), Scoville (604), Davidoff (540), and Elsberg (414). The most cited book was Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain, by Penfield and Jasper, and the most cited paper was Scoville and Milner's "Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions." Authors who wrote more papers were found to have a greater total number of citations for these papers, but did not average more citations per paper than less productive colleagues. Neurosurgeons with research experience were more productive but not more creative than were more clinically oriented authors. The 5-year creative peak of 7 of the 10 most creative neurosurgeons occurred after the age of 50. The subjects on which the 50 neurosurgeons wrote the most papers were central nervous system tumors, trauma, and the basic neurosciences; these subjects also were cited most frequently. The proximity of the date of publication to the period of citation analysis resulted in a moderately better chance of a paper being cited, but more recent papers did not average more total citations.