Abstract
- OBJECTIVE: To describe an intuitive and useful method for measuring the global impact of a medical scholar 's research ideas by examining cross -border citations (CBCs) of peer -reviewed neurosurgical publications. - METHODS: Publication and citation data for a random sample of the top 50 most academically productive neurosurgeons were obtained from Scopus Application Programming Interface. We characterized an author -level global impact index analogous to the widely used h -index, the h global -index, defined as the number of published peerreviewed manuscripts with at least the same number of CBCs. To uncover socioeconomic insights, we explored the h global - index for high-, middle-, and low-income countries. - RESULTS: The median (interquartile range) number of publications and CBCs were 144 (62-255) and 2704 (9595325), respectively. The median (interquartile range) h -index and h global -index were 42 (23-61) and 32 (17-38), respectively. Compared with neurosurgeons in the random sample, the 3 global neurosurgeons had the highest h global - indices in low-income countries at 17, 13, and 9, despite below -average h -index scores of 33, 38, and 19, respectively. - CONCLUSION: This intuitive update to the h -index uses CBCs to measure the global impact of scientific research. The h global -index may provide insight into global diffusion of medical ideas, which can be used for social science research, author self -assessment, and academic promotion.