Can a Resident's Publication Record Predict Fellowship Publications?

Abstract

BackgroundInternal medicine fellowship programs have an incentive to select fellows who will ultimately publish. Whether an applicant's publication record predicts long term publishing remains unknown.MethodsUsing records of fellowship bound internal medicine residents, we analyzed whether publications at time of fellowship application predict publications more than 3 years (2 years into fellowship) and up to 7 years after fellowship match. We calculate the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and likelihood ratios for every cutoff number of application publications, and plot a receiver operator characteristic curve of this test.ResultsOf 307 fellowship bound residents, 126 (41%) published at least one article 3 to 7 years after matching, and 181 (59%) of residents do not publish in this time period. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve is 0.59. No cutoff value for application publications possessed adequate test characteristics.ConclusionThe number of publications an applicant has at time of fellowship application is a poor predictor of who publishes in the long term. These findings do not validate the practice of using application publications as a tool for selecting fellows.

Trends in the dermatology residency match from 2007 to 2018: Implications for the dermatology workforce

“…3,4 Still, whether higher scholarly activity in applications reflects any higher likelihood to pursue an academic career is unclear. 5 The increasing prevalence of non-PhD graduate degrees may reflect either greater enrollment in combined degree programs such as an MD/MPH or MD/MBA program, or advanced training before medical school.…”

“…2 AMs are more common on certain weight-bearing areas of the feet in Japanese and white patients 3,4 ; acral melanocytic nevi (AMN) are more common on noneweight-bearing areas in Korean patients. 5 If AMs evolve from AMN or an intermediate precursor, the location and incidence of AMs and AMN or atypical AMN should correlate. Herein, we compare the distribution of AMN and atypical AMN to the distribution of AM on the plantar surface of the foot in a predominately white population.…”

Scholarly Research Productivity among Otolaryngology Residency Graduates and its Relationship to Future Academic Achievement

“…The most common type of publications were observational studies (1015/2538, 40.0%), and the most common journal published in was The Laryngoscope (n = 378; impact factor = 2.34 in 2018; Table 2). Graduates had a mean H-index of 3.7 (SD 3.7) and the highest H-index was 25.…”

“…Although several reports show promising results, investigations of publication trends among internal medicine and neurosurgery residency graduates have yielded conflicting findings. [22][23][24][25] Within the field of otolaryngology specifically, Kohlert et al 26 found that publishing at least 1 paper during medical school made an individual almost 6 times more likely to publish in residency. Furthermore, Eloy et al 27 found a considerable difference in h-indices among faculty members of academic otolaryngology departments with higher publication output than those without.…”

The Scholarly Brainstorming Project: An Initiative to Increase Scholarly Productivity in a Large Internal Medicine Program

“…The ACGME requires residents to participate in the production of scholarly endeavours; our experience is that such success is extremely valuable, especially as a platform to learn how to initiate scientifically excellent productivity during fellowships training (ACGME.org, 2018). One study, however, demonstrated a poor correlation between the number of publications that a trainee spawns during residency and fellowship (Prasad et al, 2014). The ACGME places greater value on the acquisition of tools learned during residency rather than on the number of scholarly products at that training level (Philibert et al, 2013).…”