Jun 20
Key Opinion Leaders in research at NEOMED
During a bustling lunch hour at a highfalutin restaurant, two investors talked business.
“My broker says it’s a really good buy. What does your broker say?” asks one investor.
The other investor leans in, and says, “Well, my broker is EF Hutton …”
The room goes dead silent.
Some may remember that decade’s old commercial, which promoted the influence of industry experts.
While much has changed with the company, the spirit of its line, “When EF Hutton talks, people listen,” still lingers for key opinion leaders (KOLs) of today.
Not to be confused with the more commonly termed “influencers” in social media, KOLs are trusted experts with experience in a particular field.
Social media influencers have tens of thousands of niche followers who value what they’ve said. KOLs influence thousands who value the work they’ve done. But KOLs aren’t necessarily followed.
So how do those seeking knowledge find KOLs or information about their work? Some seek them out via LinkedIn. But most simply conduct a Google search.
That’s what Sara did.
Sitting on the couch at her home, she noticed that her arm was shaking. So, she did a search on the symptoms. She was aware of the disease — Parkinson’s — that kept appearing in the search results but didn’t know a lot about it. She had experienced other small signs before. Now she was discovering more about neurodegenerative disorders via Google.
Studies revealed that Parkinson’s usually gets worse over time and that there was no cure. Sara became concerned about quality of life, particularly as a mom of two young girls.
Diagnosed just a few years ago with Parkinson’s disease, Sara has since learned a lot about the disease. Research shows that exercise heals the brain. As a competitive triathlete, she sees how her regular workouts benefit her neurodegenerative condition.
Quoting retired actor and Parkinson’s activist, Michael J. Fox, who has lived with the disease for more than 30 years, Sara says, “Gratitude is what makes optimism sustainable.”
She adds, “Research definitely does offer a lot of hope for the quality of my future.”
Google Scholar
One might assume that the average person initially searches for information about such diseases via the web, but might find it surprising that even medical professionals find useful information by simply searching via Google.
No prevention. No cure. Conditions like Parkinson’s disease have not had a new drug developed in decades. Yet people who live with such conditions remain hopeful as advancements in basic medical research to stop disease progression help to improve the understanding of such diseases, and as a result, the quality of people’s lives.
Of course, such research studies are published and can be found in peer-reviewed medical journals. And members of the NEOMED community as well as its clinical and education network can access journals, articles and other resources through the University’s library.
Many of these studies are used and cited thousands of times to support additional work. And they can be found through Google Scholar, where abstracts are mostly available for free.
The search engine provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly research across many disciplines and sources. And it’s free. It aggregates scholarly literature in one place.
Google Scholar also ranks documents by weighing the full text; where it was published; who it was written by; and how often and recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
This results in Google Scholar Metrics, which shows the influence of published authors by displaying which articles were cited the most and who cited them.
In addition to being found via relevant subject searches, authors who provide a public profile appear in Google Scholar results when people search for their name. Google Scholar showcases metrics for all and recent (last five years) citations. It also uses two indices: h-index and i10-index. The h-index is the largest number h such that at least h articles by an author were cited at least h times each. For example, an h-index of 5 means five articles were cited at least 5 times each. The i10-index is the number of articles published by an author that have received at least 10 citations.
The h-index not only shows the productivity of a scientist or scholar, it also shows their impact on others.
J.E. Hirsch, creator of the index, says that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional. He added that 84% of Nobel prize winners in physics, for example, had an h-index of at least 30.
The work of these researchers — as well as that of many others whose work has been cited hundreds of times and used to advance science and practice — has contributed to the wellness of communities.
Key Opinion Leaders in Research Focus Areas
Based on the h-index and citation metrics alone, many NEOMED researchers and their work have been influential to the work of others.
With a quick search on Google Scholar to find studies conducted by NEOMED researchers, you’ll find more than 80 scholars listed. At least 30 of them have more than 1,000 citations.
Search Sheila Fleming, Ph.D., director of NEOMED’s Neurodegenerative Disease and Aging Research Focus Area and an expert in behavioral neuroscience and Parkinson’s disease, and you’ll find studies such as “The effect of short-term treadmill exercise in the alpha-synuclein preformed fibril rat model of Parkinson’s disease.” Exercise heals the brain. Sound familiar? According to Google Scholar, Dr. Fleming has an h-index of 40 and 9,579 citations. She is clearly a key opinion leader.
