Identifying and analyzing extremely productive authors in intensive care medicine: A scientometric analysis

Clinical progress relies heavily on research, however, recent years have seen distortions in this process due to the “publish or perish” model. This model is further amplified by team science, leading to inflated author counts and metrics. Recently the rise of hyperprolific (HA) and almost hyperprolific (AHA) authors has been highlighted in the global literature scenario, but data on intensive care medicine (ICM) is lacking. This study aims to investigate HA and AHA authors in ICM and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on publication rates. We identified authors publishing in ICM journals indexed by Scopus from 2019 to 2023, retrieving their Scopus IDs, publication details, and gender. HA were defined as authors who published at least 73 articles per year, while AHA as authors who published more than 60. The effect of COVID-19 literature was assessed by excluding COVID-related articles from the dataset. We identified 42860 articles in ICM journals, involving 186150 unique authors with a median of 5 publications per author. Only 248 (0.1 %) were extremely productive, with 131 being hyperprolific (HA). Removing COVID-19 papers significantly reduced HA and AHA counts by up to 40 %. Extremely productive authors were predominantly male (91.5 %) and globally distributed, primarily from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Hyperprolific authors in ICM represent a very small minority. These authors are typically related to ICM, male, senior researchers with a global distribution, who publish high-quality research through a significant research network. • EP authors represent only 0.1 % of ICM researchers between 2019 and 2023. • Male authors make up 91.5 % of EP authors in critical care research. • EP authors often publish outside ICM, suggesting non-intensivist backgrounds. • Removing COVID-related papers reduces EP publication rates by 40 %. • The COVID-19 pandemic significantly influenced EP authors' publishing rates.