Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The Association Between NIMH Funding and h-index in Psychiatry

  • In Brief Report
  • Published:
Academic Psychiatry Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

Academic productivity is measured under many domains: number of high impact publications, objective bibliometrics, securing extra-mural funding, etc. Citation impact is measured by an objective bibliometric called h-index. Securing funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is considered prestigious in the field of psychiatry. It is unknown if NIMH takes into consideration the author’s h-index during the grant review process. The goal of this study was to determine the correlation between a principal investigator’s (PI’s) h-index and the NIMH funding.

Method

Correlational analysis was conducted on publicly available 2012 NIMH funding data to assess the relationship between NIMH funding and a PI’s h-index. A simple linear regression was calculated to predict the h-index based on the amount of funding offered to the PI.

Results

A total of 139 PIs and their corresponding h-index and NIMH funding (direct, indirect, and total cost) were included. A strong correlation was found between h-index and NIMH funding: direct cost (r = 0.632, p < 0.001); indirect cost (r = 0.570, p < 0.001); and total cost (r = 0.639, p < 0.001). Total funding significantly predicted h-index, β = 0.821, t (2.599), p < 0.01, and explained a significant proportion of variance in h-index, R 2 = 0.410, F (3, 119) = 27.59, p < 0.001.

Conclusion

A strong relationship was seen between h-index and securing NIMH funding. Thus, h-index stands out as a reliable measure for assessing the impact of scholarly contributions in academic psychiatry and can be used as an adjunct for performance evaluations, appointment, and promotions in academia.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

References

  1. Beasley BW, Wright SM, Cofrancesco Jr J, Babbott SF, Thomas PA, Bass EB. Promotion criteria for clinician-educators in the United States and Canada. A survey of promotion committee chairpersons. JAMA. 1997;278(9):723–8.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Webber KL. Measuring faculty productivity. In: Shin JC et al., editors. University rankings theoretical basis, methodology and impacts on global higher education: Dordrecht. Germany: Springer; 2011. p. 105–21.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Glänzel W. On the opportunities and limitations of the H-index. Science focus. 2006.

  4. Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102(46):16569–72.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  5. Harzing AW. Reflections on the h-index. 2016 [updated April 2016; cited 2016 August 8, 2016]; Available from: http://www.harzing.com/publications/white-papers/reflections-on-the-h-index.

  6. Svider PF, Husain Q, Folbe AJ, Couldwell WT, Liu JK, Eloy JA. Assessing national institutes of health funding and scholarly impact in neurological surgery. J Neurosurg. 2014;120(1):191–6.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Colaco M, Svider PF, Mauro KM, Eloy JA, Jackson-Rosario I. Is there a relationship between national institutes of health funding and research impact on academic urology? J Urol. 2013;190(3):999–1003.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Svider PF, Lopez SA, Husain Q, Bhagat N, Eloy JA, Langer PD. The association between scholarly impact and national institutes of health funding in ophthalmology. Ophthalmology. 2014;121(1):423–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Eloy JA, Svider PF, Folbe AJ, Setzen M, Baredes S. AAO-HNSF CORE grant acquisition is associated with greater scholarly impact. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2014;150(1):53–60.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Pagel PS, Hudetz JA. Scholarly productivity and national institutes of health funding of foundation for anesthesia education and research grant recipients: insights from a bibliometric analysis. Anesthesiology. 2015;123(3):683–91.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Fijalkowski N, Zheng LL, Henderson MT, Moshfeghi AA, Maltenfort M, Moshfeghi DM. Academic productivity and its relationship to physician salaries in the university of California healthcare system. South Med J. 2013;106(7):415–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. National Institute of Mental Health. Any mood disorders among adults. 2014; Available from: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-mood-disorder-among-adults.shtml.

  13. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. NIH research portfolio online reporting tools. 2016. https://projectreporter.nih.gov. Accessed month date and month, 2012

  14. Scopus Preview. Search for an author profile. https://www.scopus.com/search/form/authorFreeLookup.uri. 2016. Accessed 15 Jan 2012.

  15. Linder SK, Kamath GR, Pratt GF, Saraykar SS, Volk RJ. Citation searches are more sensitive than keyword searches to identify studies using specific measurement instruments. J Clin Epidemiol. 2015;68(4):412–7.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Faul F, Erdfelder E, Lang AG, Buchner A. G*Power 3: a flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav Res Methods. 2007;39(2):175–91.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Rezek I; McDonald RJ; Kallmes DF. Is the h-index predictive of greater NIH funding success among academic radiologists? Academic Radiology;18(11):1337–40

  18. Silvestre J, Abbatematteo JM, Chang B, Serletti JM, Taylor JA. The impact of national institutes of health funding on scholarly productivity in academic plastic surgery. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2016;137(2):690–5.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Svider PF, D’Aguillo CM, White PE, Pashkova AA, Bhagat N, Langer PD, et al. Gender differences in successful national institutes of health funding in ophthalmology. J Surg Educ. 2014;71(5):680–8.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Ball P. Index aims for fair ranking of scientists. Nature. 2005;436(7053):900.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Selek S, Saleh A. Use of h index and g index for American Academic Psychiatry. Scientometrics. 2013;99(2):541–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Patel VM, Ashrafian H, Almoudaris A, Makanjuola J, Bucciarelli-Ducci C, Darzi A, et al. Measuring academic performance for healthcare researchers with the H index: which search tool should be used? Medical principles and practice : international journal of the Kuwait University. Health Science Centre. 2013;22(2):178–83.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Smita Saraykar & Salih Selek

  2. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ayman Saleh

Authors
  1. Smita Saraykar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ayman Saleh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Salih Selek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Salih Selek.

Ethics declarations

IRB Information

IRB approval was not needed since a publicly available dataset was used.

Disclosures

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding Sources

None

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Saraykar, S., Saleh, A. & Selek, S. The Association Between NIMH Funding and h-index in Psychiatry. Acad Psychiatry 41, 455–459 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-016-0654-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-016-0654-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation