Neurosurgery Resident Applicant Research Evaluation: Leveling the Playing Field

Introduction: Neurosurgery residency is highly competitive, with applicants increasingly emphasizing research to strengthen their applications. This has led to a rise in publications but also to applicant anxiety and concerns about exaggerated contributions. Reviewers face extensive publication lists of publications with varying quality and involvement levels. To ensure fair assessment, we developed a scoring system that considers authorship position and journal impact facto for a more precise evaluation of research contributions in neurosurgery applications.

Methods: Our scoring system assigns points based on authorship position and journal impact factor: 5 points for first or senior author, 3 for second, 1 for third, and 0.5 each position between third and last. This score is multiplied by the journal’s impact factor to create a quality-adjusted measure of each publication. Only peer-reviewed publications were included, while submitted works were excluded. Additionally, chapters in edited books were awarded 1 point each. This system was applied blindly to applicants to the BIDMC 2025 neurosurgery residency program to evaluate correlation with interview outcomes.

Results: Among 318 applicants, the median number of publications was 7, with an overall median score of 41.2. Of these 39 applicants (12.3%) were invited to interview, with a median of 10 publications compared to 5 in the non-invited group. Invited applicants had higher scores (75.55 vs. 32.3; p< 0.01) and a greater proportion of first (22.2% vs. 14.3%, p=0.04) and second authorships (22.2% vs. 14.0%, p< 0.01). The research index score significantly correlated with publication number (R2 = 0.80, p< 0.01).

Conclusion : Our scoring system provides an objective and quality-adjusted method for evaluating neurosurgery residency applicants' research contributions. This effectively provides an adjunct metric to the residency selection process, fostering transparency and fairness in applicant evaluation.