Plastic Surgery Foundation (PSF) Funding Trends and Publication Metrics for PSF Grant Awardees: A Retrospective 10-year Analysis on Successful Applicants
Plastic surgeons remain the lowest awarded individual group of NIH applicants. The Plastic Surgery Foundation (PSF), whose mission includes supporting innovative plastic surgery projects for future extramural funding, has become the primary source of funding for plastic surgery investigators. Previously, PSF applications have been analyzed to identify metrics characteristic of successful PSF grant projects; however, the factors which predict future publication or future extramural funding remain incompletely characterized. In this study, 191 Basic Science and 47 Clinical grants awarded by the PSF from 2004-2013 were analyzed. The primary investigator characteristics, including readership metrics, gender, home institution, project type and mentorship to identify predictive indicators of application and investigator success in publication and funding of their associated projects. Projects designated under the “Clinical grant” category demonstrated a 2.9-fold increase in Altmetric scores (p<0.001) and a 1.6-fold increase in Mendeley Readership Scores (p<0.04), though these projects require almost 6 months longer to achieve publication than projects designated as “Basic Science” (p<0.02). Dual-degree applicants were 1.5-times more likely to have successful clinical projects, and 1.7-times more likely to contribute to future NIH funding than their single-degree counterparts. Applicants from institutions from non-Top 30 NIH funded institutions were more successful if their mentor carried a higher H-index (35.34 vs. 40.8 from non-top 30 NIH funded institutes, p<0.003). This study reveals significant tendencies in successful PSF grants, which can inform applicants to improve future applications.