Publication Records of Pharmacy Practice Chairpersons: A 5-Year Analysis

INTRODUCTION: Pharmacy practice faculty are expected to pursue scholarship to advance the pharmacy profession and science. Chairpersons are considered role models and mentors in their departments, thereby their publication records could serve as a benchmark for faculty members. RESEARCH QUESTION OR HYPOTHESIS: What are the publication records and citation numbers of current chairpersons at colleges and schools of pharmacy in the USA? STUDY DESIGN: This was a quantitative observational study. METHODS: Pharmacy practice chairpersons were identified through the websites of colleges and schools of pharmacy. Google scholar was used to conduct comprehensive search for 1) numbers of peer-reviewed articles authored by chairpersons published from 2006 to 2010 and 2) corresponding citation numbers in the following five years after publication. In this study peer-reviewed articles were original research, case study, letter to the editor, and literature review. Two persons independently conducted this search, and any conflicting results were rechecked and evaluated by all authors. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics in Microsoft Excel 2016. RESULTS: Although there were 135 colleges and schools of pharmacy in 2016, a total of 118 chairpersons were identified with 659 publications from 2006 to 2010. The mean, median and mode numbers of publications per chairperson were 5.58, 3, and 0 respectively. The mean, median and mode numbers of citation numbers per article in the following five years after publication were 13.01, 9.08 and 0 respectively. There were 26 (22.03%) chairpersons published more than 8 articles during the 5-year study period, 35 (29.66%) chairpersons published 3 to 8 articles, and 57 (48.31%) chairpersons published 0 to 2 articles. Notably, the 26 chairpersons who published more than 8 articles produced 421 (63.88%) articles with 17.9 citation numbers per article. CONCLUSION: Our study provided the data of publication records from 2006 to 2010 of current pharmacy practice chairpersons, which could be used as a benchmark for faculty members, especially junior faculty.