The Arms Race Control Score (ARCS) Predicts Academic Productivity During Neurosurgical Residency and Correlates with the Institutional Ranking of Academic Faculty Neurosurgical Positions

Introduction: Within Neurosurgical Residency Programs, there is a dearth of wide-ranging metrics that can accurately evaluate residents across their training and provide key insight for future physician career pathways in both academic and private sectors. The Arms Race Control Score (ARCS), a novel screening metric, measures academic productivity through PubMed-indexed articles amongst an oversaturation of low-effort publications. This study aims to utilize the ARCS and assess its efficacy as a metric to measure publication quality and predict academic career paths.

Methods: All UCLA residents completing training from June 2004 to June 2017 were extracted for key demographic and bibliometric characteristics such as; total training duration, total number of PubMed-indexed publications during neurosurgical training (TNPDT), ARCS score, academic (A) or non-academic (NA) status, and academic institution national ranking. Descriptive statistics and linear regressions were performed to assess correlations between variables of interest. All non-normally distributed data was transformed to a normal distribution. All trends were reported, however, a p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: A total of 35 residents were included in this analysis, with 57% (N=20) employed in non-academic institutions and 43% (N=15) in academic institutions. Bivariate analysis revealed trends of higher median TNPDT (A: 17 vs NA: 9, p=0.122) and ARCS (A: 17.5 vs NA: 12.8, p=0.178). Linear regression analysis revealed a positive correlation between ARCS score, TNPDT (p < 0.001), and was associated with high-ranking academic institutions (p=0.068).

Conclusion : Our study validates the ARCS as an accurate and promising metric to assess neurosurgical academic productivity during training and its correlation with academic career paths. Specifically, ARCS score correlates with higher institutional rankings of the neurosurgeon faculty entering academics. Future studies should be conducted to further validate the ARCS metric in larger multi-institutional cohorts.