Majority of Most Cited Articles in Top Plastic Surgery Journals do not Receive Funding
Abstract Background Plastic surgery faculty, residencies, and institutions are frequently judged on the quantity and quality of their research output. Some of the most impressive individuals in the specialty receive financial support in the form of grants and payments to help with research ideas. Objectives We wanted to discern if funding directly correlates to greater impact in the top plastic surgery journals as measured by citations. Methods Using the Web of Science database, we identified the 50 most cited articles in each of the top plastic surgery journals from January 1975 to August 2020. We then scanned these articles for funding sources and delineated between industry, federal, foundational, and institutional while stratifying by decade. Results Between 16 journals, 13.3% of the most cited articles received funding, 2.6% of that coming from industry, 5.4% from government, 4.4% from foundations and 0.86% from institutions. The percentage of most cited articles and proportion that received funding were both correlated with decade (p=0.0017 and p=0.043, respectively). However, only the percentage of articles was found to have a significant increase over time (p=0.0068). Conclusions Although funding leads to meaningful publications, our study showed that financial support is not required to have an influence in plastic surgery research.