Publication metrics across radiology subspecialties: A point-in-time analysis

Publication metrics provide an objective means for establishing academic scholarship activity and are impactful for faculty promotion. We performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of academic productivity across radiology subspecialties to better understand the variability in publication metrics of US academic radiology faculty.

Academic faculty from ten radiology subspecialties [Abdominal(AbI), Breast(BI), Cardiothoracic(CTR), Emergency Radiology(ER), Interventional(IR), Musculoskeletal(MSK), Neuroradiology(NR), Neurointerventional(NIR), Nuclear Medicine/Molecular Imaging(NM/MI), and Pediatric(Peds) imaging] were identified from online sources: sex, track and academic rank were recorded. Bibliometric data for these faculty were obtained from Scopus on March 1-2, 2026. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests with Bonferroni correction compared non-normally distributed data. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression estimated adjusted productivity, controlling for academic rank and academic age (years since first publication).

Among 7330 faculty from 160 institutions, there were significant productivity differences between subspecialties across all bibliometrics (p < 0.001). NIR ranked highest in median publications (54), citations (1259), and h-index (17), followed by NM/MI (39, 826, and 13 respectively). BI, MSK, and ER consistently ranked as the least publication productive subspecialties, with a 9-fold difference in median publications (NIR 54 to ER 6). OLS regression adjusting for rank and academic age confirmed NIR as the most and BI the least publication productive subspecialties.

Substantial productivity differences exist between radiology subspecialties. NIR, NM/MI, NR and CTR consistently cluster at the top of bibliometric output with ER, BI and MSK at the bottom. These differences persist after controlling for career length, sex, and academic rank and are useful for annual review and promotion considerations.