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Citation Half-Life and Aging Patterns Across Plastic Surgery Subspecialties: A Bibliometric Analysis
Charbel Saad
*1, Josip Plascevic
2, Hiren Parekh
3, Sashank Reddy
11Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; 2Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, MA; 3Yale College, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Background: Plastic surgery encompasses subspecialties with differing rates of innovation and paradigm change, yet the patterns of citation aging and turnover across plastic surgery literature have not been systematically quantified. We aimed to quantify and compare citation-aging patterns across major plastic surgery subspecialty domains using complementary citation-aging metrics.
Methods: We performed a bibliometric analysis using Scopus to evaluate citation aging in six search-defined plastic surgery literature groups (aesthetic surgery, breast reconstruction, burn surgery, craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, and microsurgery) identified using subspecialty-specific search strategies. Citation age distributions were summarized annually and pooled across citing years 2006-2020 for exponential decay modeling. Citation aging was assessed using exponential decay modeling as a parametric approximation, with median citation half-life reported as a complementary nonparametric measure. Subspecialty differences in median citation half-life were tested using Kruskal-Wallis with post hoc Wilcoxon rank-sum tests.
Results: A total of 34,901 publications generating 329,218 citations were analyzed (2006-2020). Median citation half-life showed modest but consistent differences across the literature groups (p < 0.001): the breast reconstruction group had the shortest median citation half-life (8 years), whereas the craniofacial, hand, and microsurgery groups had longer medians (10 years). Model-based exponential decay estimates showed the same pattern, with exponential half-lives ranging from 7.56 years in breast reconstruction to 10.36 years in craniofacial surgery. Citation-aging patterns were temporally stable across 2006-2020.
Conclusions: Citation half-life varies modestly across plastic surgery literature groups aligned with major subspecialty domains. Combining nonparametric citation half-life with model-based exponential decay provides a useful framework for characterizing citation aging and turnover of cited literature in plastic surgery.
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