Introduction
Medical research is a crucial part of improvement in healthcare, and
provides advancements and alterations in both diagnostics and
therapeutics. One way to assess academical research is scholarly
productivity, as measured by research output. Bibliometrics is a science
that integrates statistics into scholar productivity and can be useful
in assessing academic yield in various levels; from an individual to
global standards comparisons. This growing field of research is
implemented in diverse medical fields, and with various implications
such as in the use of journals’ impact factors and the assessment of
specific literature on medical contributes.
Various parameters have been researched and studied in the use of
bibliometrics in the medical field such as citation and publication
count to reflect scholar productivity. But with the inherit drawbacks of
these parameters a need for a more advanced parameter has risen, hence
created the H index as published by Hirsh in 2005. This parameter allows
for the comparison of different subjects whilst alimenting specific
confounders such as arbitrariness and relevance of publication. Ever
since, the H index has established as the standard of scientometrics and
is used widely to evaluate and compare an individual’s academic work, as
well as institutions and countries.
A number of papers have been published in the field of otolaryngology –
head and neck surgery (ORL-HNS) concerning data of specific researchers,
country to country comparison or the contribution of a specific country
to overall scholarly productivity and impact. Previous studies have
demonstrated a certain correlation between academic yield to percentage
of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on health in other medical fields.
In this article, we would like to assess national economic parameters in
the Countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) in a period of 24 years to
ORL-HNS academics.