Senior Mentorship and Scholarly Success: Assessing Influences on Successful Neurosurgery Residency Applicant's H index

Introduction: Neurosurgery resident application research productivity continues to rise. Here we explore the potential relationship between the medical student’s senior mentor’s research productivity and matching into a top 40 neurosurgery research residency program.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of bibliometric information for residents who matched into neurosurgery in 2022-23 and their respective senior authors. Bibliometric information was collected on Scopus. Top 40 programs and schools were determined as programs with the highest ih(5) index.

Results: Logistic regression analysis of resident publication numbers and top 40 match outcomes did not establish a significant relationship (p=0.29). Conversely, when evaluating the connection between h-index values and top 40 match results, we identified statistical significance (p=0.038). Furthermore, we found that the maximum h-index of a senior author exhibited statistical significance when comparing a match at a top 40 residency program (p=0.003). Lastly, both resident and senior author H-indices were significantly higher if they were affiliated with a top 40 medical school (p=0.05, p< 0.001 respectively). Utilizing linear regression, we established that the number of publications had a significant impact (p < 0.001), explaining approximately 59% of the variability in interns' h-index. Similarly, the maximum h-index of senior authors of interns' pre-residency publications had a significant impact (p < 0.001), accounting for 42% of the variability in interns' h-index. Notably, when using a multiple linear regression model that considered both factors, 69% of the variance in interns' h-index was accounted for.

Conclusion : Our results indicate that the number of publications is a less effective predictor for matching into research-focused programs compared to an applicant's h-index. Additionally, the academic productivity of the senior authors an applicant has worked with strongly predicts the applicant's h-index. When combined with the number of publications, it accounts for most of the variance in the research ranking of a program an applicant matches into.