Journal of Pediatric Surgery Article Review: The Disruption Score

The H-index (Hirsch index) represents the influence or impact of a particular author, with higher values indicating greater impact.

Dr. George Holcomb has an H-index of 51, reflecting extensive publication over his surgical career.

Dr. Shah, the senior author of the disruption score paper, has an H-index of 8, which is typical of a fairly average pediatric surgeon.

If future papers cite only the index paper and not its references, that paper is considered more disruptive; if they cite both the index paper and its references, it is less disruptive and more developmental.

The disruption score ranges from -1 to +1, with +1 being the most disruptive and -1 representing developmental papers.

The disruption score is calculated as (A-B)/(A+B+C), where A is citations without the index paper's references, B is citations including both the index paper and its references, and C is citations of references only without the index paper.

In an example calculation, a paper cited 100 times with 90 citations not including references (A=90), 10 citations including both (B=10), and 20 citations of references only (C=20) yields a disruption score of 0.66.

Michael Gauderer's paper describing percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomies, with Jeff Ponsky as second author, ranked number 1 in the top 100 most disruptive papers.

The number 2 ranked paper was a large series on intussusception.

The number 3 ranked paper was a large series on fundoplications.

A paper on internet use in families of children requiring cardiac surgery ranked number 6, which Dr. Davenport found surprising.

A case report on fibrous fusion between liver and lung, cited only 17 times, ranked number 7 on the list.

Different areas within pediatric surgery showed varying patterns, with some fields having more developmental research (like neuroblastoma) and others having more innovation and disruptive articles (like trauma).

Dr. Davenport considers the article original but does not believe the disruption score stands up by comparison to conventional citation scores as the key method of assessing a paper's impact.

Dr. Ponsky suggests that if people make the effort to use the disruption score metric over the next several years, it may become widely adopted.

Dr. Ponsky proposes that young authors and academicians could start including disruption scores on their CVs, which would generate interest and questions from reviewers.