To the Editor:
The “publish or perish” phenomenon is a reality in medical research, where continuous publication is essential for career advancement and overall success. We investigated the impact of this phenomenon in paediatric ophthalmology and strabismus (POS) for 2022 in 12 leading journals (Supplementary-e-table-1) and identified the ten most prolific authors who had implemented a previous methodology [1]. We excluded editorials, letters, or comments.
Our search yielded 343 articles including 1786 authors (average 1.19 ± 0.79, median 1, range 1–15 articles per author). Forty percent of the ten most prolific authors were women, twice as many compared to that in general ophthalmology (20%) [1]. The narrowing gender gap in POS was previously reported in another publication [2].
A full PubMed search revealed an average of 17.4 ± 9.9 (median 14.5) articles, indicating a vast difference from the remaining POS authors. Articles were published in journals with an average impact factor of 5.9 ± 5.8 (median 3.9). This diversity indicates a wide spectrum of journals, not limited to top-tier ophthalmology publications.
These prolific authors were in a first-author position in 14.16% ± 18.9% (median 7.7%) of the articles, a middle position in 52.2% ± 27.8% (median 48.4%), and the last position in 33.7% ± 22.3% (median 32.05%) (Table 1). The fact that half of the contributions were in middle positions may imply the significant role of prolific authors, even when they are not the principal authors, presumably due to their experience level and reputation.
Studies led by research groups comprised 26.4 ± 13.6% (median 26.1%). Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comprised 16.5 ± 10.4% (median 14.1%) (Table 2). The average Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine scheme rank [3] for the top 10 prolific authors was 2.6 ± 0.5 (median 2.8). A median of 18.8% achieved the highest rank (level 1), denoting good quality RCT or systemic reviews of randomized trials, compared with none of the articles in general ophthalmology [1] (Supplementary-e-Table-2). Furthermore, in a study that examined multiple fields of medicine, including epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis, renal transplantation, and liver transplantation, only 1.6% of papers published by the 10 most prolific authors over 5 years were systematic reviews, whereas 22.3% were clinical trials [4]. Note that the articles did not provide information on the quality of the clinical trials; therefore, their association with the Oxford scheme ranking could not be determined. This nuanced contrast highlights the possibly better maintenance of high research quality by prolific authors in the specialized area of POS compared with general ophthalmology or other fields of medicine.
Interestingly, in 2022 the top 10 prolific authors in POS published 14.5 times as many articles as all POS authors combined. They published higher-ranking article types in journals with a higher impact factor compared with general ophthalmology or other fields of medicine. However, they were not the principal authors in more than half of the publications. The gender gap was smaller by half, compared with general ophthalmology, adding to the trend previously reported in POS [2]. These observations on this unique group may inspire others to excel.
References
Lansingh VC, Eckert KA, Quiroga AEE. Prolific authors in ophthalmology and vision science. Arq Bras Oftalmol. 2021;84:624–7. https://doi.org/10.5935/0004-2749.20210122.
Baharav-Shlezinger E, Mosleh R, Ben-David G, Mezer E, Wygnanski-Jaffe T. Aspects affecting pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus publication times. Harefuah. 2023;162:677–80.
Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. OCEBM Levels of Evidence The Oxford 2011. Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine. http://cebm-levels-of-evidence-2.1.pdf/.
Wager E, Singhvi S, Kleinert S. Too much of a good thing? An observational study of prolific authors. PeerJ. 2015;3:e1154. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1154.
Funding
Open access funding provided by Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
LS-C: data acquisition; data analysis; interpreting results; preparing figures and tables; drafting and writing; EM: conceptualization; planning and designing; interpreting results; drafting and writing; critical appraisal; supervision. TW-J: conceptualization; interpreting results; critical appraisal; supervision.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Solomon-Cohen, L., Mezer, E. & Wygnanski-Jaffe, T. Publish or perish in paediatric ophthalmology and strabismus – where do we stand?. Eye (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-024-03013-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-024-03013-4
