Promotion from Associate Professor to Full Professor Should Not Be Monolithic: A National Bibliometric Study by...

Academic promotion from associate professor (AP) to full professor (FP) in radiology relies heavily on bibliometrics, yet no subspecialty-specific benchmarks exist to guide promotion committees or faculty career planning. Applying uniform productivity standards across diverse subspecialties may disadvantage faculty in certain fields and fail to account for legitimate variations in research output. Hence, we aim to establish subspecialty-specific bibliometric benchmarks for promotion readiness from AP to FP in academic radiology and quantify the promotion gap across subspecialties.

We analyzed 1931 APs and 1759 FPs across nine radiology subspecialties at 136 US institutions between September 2025 and January 2026. Bibliometric data (publications, citations, h-index, first/last author publications) were obtained from Scopus. Upper-tier AP percentiles (60th-90th) defined "promotion readiness" benchmarks, while lower-tier FP percentiles (10th-40th) represented "entry thresholds." The promotion gap was quantified by comparing percentile distributions and calculating median bibliometric differences between ranks.

Promotion readiness at the 80th percentile varied 4.2-fold for publications [154 (Neurointerventional) vs. 37 (Breast)], 4.5-fold for citations [3598 (Nuclear Medicine) vs. 799 (Musculoskeletal)], and 2.2-fold for h-index [31 (Neurointerventional) vs. 14 (Breast)] across subspecialties. An AP at the 80th percentile in Pediatric Radiology would rank at the 49th percentile among FPs (smallest gap), while one in Musculoskeletal Radiology would rank at the 29th percentile (largest gap)-a 21-percentile-point difference. The AP 80th percentile exceeded the FP 20th percentile for every subspecialty. Achieving median FP bibliometric levels would require APs to publish 2.67 (Breast Imaging) to 9.14 (Neurointerventional) additional papers annually, including one first/last-authored publication.

Substantial variation exists in bibliometric profiles across radiology subspecialties, with notable differences in observed promotion gaps by subspecialty. These subspecialty-specific observed benchmarks can inform promotion committees and guide faculty career planning.