Pittsburgh, August 30, 2010 -- The Department of Neurological Surgery ranked first in academic output in top-tier specialty journals among all departments of neurosurgery across the United States and Canada, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

Researchers from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and the neurosurgery division of the University of Toronto applied the h index, which reflects the number of papers and citations of an individual, to 99 American and 14 Canadian neurosurgery departments with residency programs.

The results showed that Pitt’s Department of Neurological Surgery had the highest h score for the number of papers published by its faculty in the Journal of Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery from 2000 to 2009; it ranked 7th when all journal publications were included in that time frame, and 8th when there were no time constraints.

“I am extremely proud that the University of Pittsburgh ranked so well on all these measures,” said department chair Robert M. Friedlander, MD “We have a great balance of accomplished academicians and gifted clinicians who are clearly making a difference in the field.”

The researchers noted that the “h indices exhibit significant correlations with other measures of institutional scholarship and productivity, such as NIH funding, number of faculty, and the academic degrees held by faculty.”