title: Scholarly activity points: a new tool to evaluate resident scholarly productivity.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Scholarly activity is an important aspect of a resident's educational experience; however, evaluation methods have remained underdeveloped despite the increased focus over the last decade. A new scoring system is proposed as a comprehensive evaluation tool.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this scoring system, each scholarly activity (i.e. abstracts, manuscripts, book chapters, research protocols, and research grants) are converted into a numerical score, Scholarly Activity Points (SAPs), which reflects the complexity of the project and the degree of resident's involvement. First, a relative weight value is given to each scholarly category based on its complexity (i.e. 50 points to an abstract, 150 to a manuscript). Then SAPs are calculated with modifiers specific to each scholarly activity (i.e. for an abstract, meeting venue, repeated presentation, authorship, abstract category, and awards). To demonstrate how the system works, a list of scholarly activities by anaesthesia residents graduating from a university programme between 2003 and 2010 was obtained. SAP scores of graduating classes were analysed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  During the 2003-2010 academic years, a total of 106 residents (the mean of 13 per class, ranging from 9 to 19) graduated from the full 3 yr residency programme. The SAP system allowed statistical comparison among the graduated classes of overall scholarly productivity; significant increases were noted in the average SAPs per resident among the classes of 2009 {154 (204), [mean (sd)]} and 2010 [524 (471)] compared with those by the classes of 2003-2006 [90 (188), 45 (73), 126 (349), 83 (205), respectively].
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A new scoring system enabled a comprehensive statistical evaluation of residents' scholarly productivity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center/University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 200 Lothrop Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Emerick
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Metro
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sakai
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education* / Q000592:standards*; D001319:Authorship; D004526:Efficiency; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000379:methods*; D011361:Professional Competence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012106:Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: academic; anaesthesiology; education; evaluation; portfolio; scholarly activity