The influence of medical school and residency training program upon choice of an academic career and academic productivity among otolaryngology faculty in the United States of America: Our experience of 1433 academic otolaryngologists Leng, T.,* Jaben, K.A.,   Zheng, L.,* Yang, J.,* Paulus, Y.M.,* Moshfeghi, A.A., à Maltenfort, M.G., § Campbell, P.G., § Ratliff, J.K. § & Moshfeghi, D.M.* *Department of Ophthalmology, Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, USA,   Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA, à Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA, and § Department of Neurosurgery, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Accepted for publication 6 October 2011 Dear Editor, While the benefits of academic productivity are clear, the influences that drive an individual to seek an academic career remain unclear. Established measures of academic success for a department include the amount of research funding obtained, number of peer-reviewed scholarly articles published, clinical productivity, number of faculty and the academic degrees held by the faculty. 1,2 Recently, the H-index has been proposed as a metric of academic success. 3 The H-index is based upon publications and their citations: An H-index of X means X number of papers cited at least X times. 4 This measurement evalu- ates both the quantity as well as the quality of papers produced, based upon the number of citations. Herein, we report on the impact of medical school and residency on the decision to pursue a career in aca- demic otolaryngology and give an estimate of the most productive medical schools and residency training pro- grams based upon the academic productivity of their graduates. As there is no single universally accepted measure of academic productivity, this study benchmarks relative rankings across training centers in the US based upon centers’ graduates. H-index based metrics are considered, in addition to the respective endowment of human capi- tal generated to provide an appraisal of all medical schools’ and US training programs’ contribution to aca- demic otolaryngology. Methods Ethical considerations The study protocol was determined to be exempt from Human Subjects approval by the Stanford University School of Medicine Review Board. Selection of programs and otolaryngologists Otolaryngologists at academic programs featuring accred- ited resident education were included in this study. A total of 103 otolaryngology programs in the US and Puerto Rico accredited by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medi- cal Education were included. Biographical information about faculty members was identified via an Internet-based search that was conducted during July 2010. Faculty mem- bers were included if listed on institutional web sites. The highest academic degree(s) was cataloged. Academic rank was recorded. Any non-otolaryngologist, research, or pro- fessor emeritus listed as faculty was excluded from analysis. All individuals who did not possess an American Board of Otolaryngology certificate (or were not board eligible) were also excluded. Residents and fellows were not included. Departments with limited disclosure of staff physicians on their website were excluded from analysis. The institutions where faculty members completed medical school and resi- dency training were also recorded. In most cases, this was available from the departmental website; however, if miss- ing, a search was performed at http://www.drscore.com. Correspondence: D.M. Moshfeghi, Byers Eye Institute at Stanford, Horngren Vitreoretinal Center, Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford University School of Medicine, 2452 Watson Court, Rm. 2277, Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA. Tel.: 650 723 6995; Fax: 650 725 6619; e-mail: dariusm@stanford.edu CORRESPONDENCE: OUR EXPERIENCE 58 Ó 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd • Clinical Otolaryngology 37, 58–75