About

Parul Agarwal, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Hematology-Oncology department at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as the GI Cancer Quality and Care Innovation Leader and Medical Director at the Perelman Center of Advanced Medicine. Her research focuses on gastrointestinal cancers, immunotherapy, and clinical trials related to pancreatic adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine tumors. Dr. Agarwal has contributed to multiple clinical studies and publications in the field of cancer immunotherapy, neoadjuvant treatments, and genetic testing in pancreatic cancers. Her work emphasizes improving patient outcomes through innovative therapeutic strategies and translational research.

Research topics

• Family medicine
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Medical education
• Library science
• Mathematics
• Psychiatry
• Statistics
• Operations management

Selected publications

• Impact of American Association of Neurological Surgeons Medical Student Interest Groups on Participation in Organized Neurosurgery, Research Productivity, and Residency Match Success

  World Neurosurgery · 2020 · 39 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Family medicine
  • Medical education
  DOI

• Assessment of the NIH-supported relative citation ratio as a measure of research productivity among 1687 academic neurological surgeons

  Journal of neurosurgery · 2020 · 50 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Medicine
  • Statistics

  OBJECTIVE: Publication metrics such as the Hirsch index (h-index) are often used to evaluate and compare research productivity in academia. The h-index is not a field-normalized statistic and can therefore be dependent on overall rates of publication and citation within specific fields. Thus, a metric that adjusts for this while measuring individual contributions would be preferable. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed a new, field-normalized, article-level metric called the "relative citation ratio" (RCR) that can be used to more accurately compare author productivity between fields. The mean RCR is calculated as the total number of citations per year of a publication divided by the average field-specific citations per year, whereas the weighted RCR is the sum of all article-level RCR scores over an author's career. The present study was performed to determine how various factors, such as academic rank, career duration, a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, and sex, impact the RCR to analyze research productivity among academic neurosurgeons. METHODS: A retrospective data analysis was performed using the iCite database. All physician faculty affiliated with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited neurological surgery programs were eligible for analysis. Sex, career duration, academic rank, additional degrees, total publications, mean RCR, and weighted RCR were collected for each individual. Mean RCR and weighted RCR were compared between variables to assess patterns of analysis by using SAS software version 9.4. RESULTS: A total of 1687 neurosurgery faculty members from 125 institutions were included in the analysis. Advanced academic rank, longer career duration, and PhD acquisition were all associated with increased mean and weighted RCRs. Male sex was associated with having an increased weighted RCR but not an increased mean RCR score. Overall, neurological surgeons were highly productive, with a median RCR of 1.37 (IQR 0.93-1.97) and a median weighted RCR of 28.56 (IQR 7.99-85.65). CONCLUSIONS: The RCR and its derivatives are new metrics that help fill in the gaps of other indices for research output. Here, the authors found that advanced academic rank, longer career duration, and PhD acquisition were all associated with increased mean and weighted RCRs. Male sex was associated with having an increased weighted, but not mean, RCR score, most likely because of historically unequal opportunities for women within the field. Furthermore, the data showed that current academic neurosurgeons are exceptionally productive compared to both physicians in other specialties and the general scientific community.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nitin Agarwal

  University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

  134 shared

• David R. Hansberry

  Drexel University

  47 shared

• Kush C. Shah

  Emory University

  36 shared

• Ira M. Goldstein

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  31 shared

• Robert M. Friedlander

  26 shared

• Samuel E. Navon

  25 shared

• Scott D. Smith

  23 shared

• Robert F. Heary

  20 shared

Labs

• Parul Agarwal LabPI

Education

• B.A., Medical Sciences

  Boston University

  2011

• M.D.

  Boston University School of Medicine

  2015

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