Journal of Pediatric Surgery Article Review: The Disruption Score

The H-index measures the influence or impact of a particular author; the higher it is, the better.

Doctor Holcomb's H-index is 51, reflecting an extensive surgical career of publications.

Doctor Shaw's H-index is 8, which is typical of a fairly average pediatric surgeon.

The disruption score ranges from -1 to +1, with +1 being the most disruptive and -1 being papers that are considered developmental in nature.

The disruption score is calculated as (A minus B) divided by (A plus B plus C), where A is citations that do not include the index paper's references, B is citations that include both the index paper and its references, and C is citations of the references alone without the index paper.

In a worked example, a paper cited 100 times with 90 citations excluding its references, 10 including both, and 20 citing only the references yields a disruption score of 0.66.

The Gauderer-Ponsky paper describing percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomies ranked number one on the disruption score list.

Some papers on the top 100 list were obscure, including a case report on fibrous fusion between the liver and lung cited only 17 times that ranked number 7.

Fields with high volumes of developmental research, such as neuroblastoma, had fewer articles on the disruption list compared to innovation-heavy fields like trauma.

The disruption score equation is not an answer for whether a paper goes viral; it measures whether a paper changes the game.

Citation scores remain the key method of assessing the impact of a particular paper.

Young authors and academicians could start putting the disruption score on their CVs to generate interest and visibility.