Physical medicine and rehabilitation. Trends in academic productivity.

Numerous authorities have emphasized the need for expanding the quantity and quality of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) research and academic productivity. Thus far, however, attempts to evaluate academic productivity have involved the manual sampling of relevant specialty journals. This approach greatly underestimates productivity. By conducting a computer-facilitated search for PM&R-related publications and then contacting the most academically prolific PM&R departments to verify the computer-generated data, it was found that computer search strategies more accurately estimate PM&R academic productivity. PM&R publication activity increased by 15% in the United States and 46% internationally over the period 1988 to 1990. At least 76% of the United States residency programs in PM&R had scientific publications over this period. With ever increasing emphasis placed on academic productivity, the trend of increasing productivity can only be expected to continue in the future.