12 Publications prior to internship?!?

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Enlightened1

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Met a 6th year student today who will be applying for internship this fall. She said she has 12 peer-reviewed publications (apparently 6 are first author). Honestly, I don't want to believer her, as I'm still working on getting my first!

Sigh....

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It's higher than average, but it happens. I think that's about how many I had when I applied for internship. It depends greatly on your lab, the disposition of your mentor regarding authorship, and how hard you work during your first few years. In the lab I came from, I knew multiple folks who had ~20 by the time they graduated.

I wouldn't let it worry you though. I believe the modal number is 1 for people who match. It's a clinical year - the sites that want more research experience might have a research component to the internship, but that wouldn't represent the majority of internship sites.
 
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Yeah, these people exist, but are outliers. Every year we get a handful of people with double digit, legitimate, publications. As long as they have decent clinical experience to match, they stand a very high chance of a top ranking. Fortunately for other students, they are coveted at other sites as well, so there's still a chance for you :)
 
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That's pretty normal for a research-oriented applicant.
 
I matched to an APA site with zero publications. I did not apply to internships that had much emphasis on research in their descriptions as I didn't feel that would be a good match since the ideal job mix for me is 50% clinical, 30% administrative, 10%research, and 10% goofing off. If my next patient doesn't show up, I will have exceeded my goofing off quota for the week!
 
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If we become the average of the people we associate with, I would be thankful as hell to be acquainted with someone like that.
 
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Apparently all 12 were obtained during graduate school. I guess I'm wondering what kind of advantage does a 12-publication applicant have over someone like me who has a more modest publication record (e.g., 1-5 publications) at research-heavy/clinical science internship sites.

I am starting to think that publication record is the most important factor at clinical science sites, in particular.
 
That's pretty normal for a research-oriented applicant.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say its "normal" but it is certainly not unheard of. I was around that number when applying to internships and closer to 20 by the end (i.e. now - it was a productive year!). I was certainly on the extreme high end even for my research-heavy program. I also took longer to finish than most, which gave me an extra couple years to accrue those.

I wouldn't stress about it too much. You probably won't be competitive for the hardcore clinical science places with zero publications, but it seems like every year there are at least a few folks with no more than a handful who match to Brown, MUSC, etc. As with many things, fit matters as much or more than anything else - so your publications won't necessarily help you at those places unless they are on the "right" topic. I know at several sites I was ranked below people with significantly fewer publications because my work is more neuropharmacological and they wanted someone with an interventions focus (for instance) - but I'm sure at other places that gave me a leg up. As I always mention on here...the nature of the publications and where they end up matters a lot too. Someone with three intensive projects published in Abnormal or JCCP will probably beat out someone with ten publications exclusively in a low-tier specialty journals with a 1.0 impact factor. Though again...it all depends on what internship, what track, what supervisors, what they are looking for in a given year, etc.
 
Actual data (APPIC surveys) indicates that 1-2% of applicants in any given year have 10+ peer reviewed publications when they apply and about 10% have 5 or more. No data on authorship order is available, unfortunately. Interestingly. APPIC finally gave us a full range with the 2015 data. It tops out 28, and previously years have shown that about .1-.3% of applicants have 20+ peer-reviewed publications. Mot applicants overall have 0 at application time, and most PhD applicants have 2 or fewer. Having any publications at all is linked to consistently higher match rates, although that doesn't control for possible confounding variables.

Also, as Ollie notes, different sites and different subfields will look for different things in a pub record. For example, I recently had a publication accepted in a fairly high IF journal (IF= ~4), but I actually may have been just as well off--or maybe even better off?--had it been in a lower IF journal but one in my subfield, because those subfield journals tend to jump out to the people who I'd like to hire me as "good journals!" whereas this one is probably relatively unknown to them. I'm really happy with the acceptance and I'm not trying to look a gifthorse in the mouth, mind you, but it's just something I noticed. Also, some journals have prestige that goes above their IF, so to speak. APA journals in particular seem to carry added, "above IF" prestige in my experience, as well as some subfield specific journals that have notably better reputations in the subfield than their IFs might suggest at first glance.

As an aside, please don't insult people who have a lot of publications just because they have a lot of publications. I have an "outlier" number of pubs (30+, ~40% first-author), and I've had so many people, including faculty, make weird comments about it, like saying that I must not have done any actual work on them, that it's weird, or even insinuating that it's unhealthy or that I must do nothing else but publish (my collaborators only *wish* that were true, trust me! ;) ), etc. Without trying to make this seem like a "my diamond shoes are too tight!" problem, it actually is a bit hurtful to put in a lot of work to do well at something and then just get passive-aggressive doubt in return.

Congrats on the almost (?) 20 publications, @Ollie123 ! Eight in a year is very impressive, especially on internship!
 
As an aside, please don't insult people who have a lot of publications just because they have a lot of publications. I have an "outlier" number of pubs (30+, ~40% first-author), and I've had so many people, including faculty, make weird comments about it, like saying that I must not have done any actual work on them, that it's weird, or even insinuating that it's unhealthy or that I must do nothing else but publish (my collaborators only *wish* that were true, trust me! ;) ), etc. Without trying to make this seem like a "my diamond shoes are too tight!" problem, it actually is a bit hurtful to put in a lot of work to do well at something and then just get passive-aggressive doubt in return.
I had about 12 or 15 pubs when I applied for internship and I got this nonsense a few times too. No, I didn't live in my lab, ugh.
 
I should clarify that by "normal" I meant not unusual. I didn't mean that it was super common or expected of applicants.

I got interviews at a few research-oriented and mostly research-friendly internships with 5 publications, and matched at a research-friendly site. Which in the end worked out fine because I got a research post-doc, which was my goal all along. Honestly, getting new research done on internship is difficult anyway.
 
Actual data (APPIC surveys) indicates that 1-2% of applicants in any given year have 10+ peer reviewed publications when they apply and about 10% have 5 or more. No data on authorship order is available, unfortunately. Interestingly. APPIC finally gave us a full range with the 2015 data. It tops out 28, and previously years have shown that about .1-.3% of applicants have 20+ peer-reviewed publications. Mot applicants overall have 0 at application time, and most PhD applicants have 2 or fewer. Having any publications at all is linked to consistently higher match rates, although that doesn't control for possible confounding variables.

Also, as Ollie notes, different sites and different subfields will look for different things in a pub record. For example, I recently had a publication accepted in a fairly high IF journal (IF= ~4), but I actually may have been just as well off--or maybe even better off?--had it been in a lower IF journal but one in my subfield, because those subfield journals tend to jump out to the people who I'd like to hire me as "good journals!" whereas this one is probably relatively unknown to them. I'm really happy with the acceptance and I'm not trying to look a gifthorse in the mouth, mind you, but it's just something I noticed. Also, some journals have prestige that goes above their IF, so to speak. APA journals in particular seem to carry added, "above IF" prestige in my experience, as well as some subfield specific journals that have notably better reputations in the subfield than their IFs might suggest at first glance.

As an aside, please don't insult people who have a lot of publications just because they have a lot of publications. I have an "outlier" number of pubs (30+, ~40% first-author), and I've had so many people, including faculty, make weird comments about it, like saying that I must not have done any actual work on them, that it's weird, or even insinuating that it's unhealthy or that I must do nothing else but publish (my collaborators only *wish* that were true, trust me! ;) ), etc. Without trying to make this seem like a "my diamond shoes are too tight!" problem, it actually is a bit hurtful to put in a lot of work to do well at something and then just get passive-aggressive doubt in return.

Congrats on the almost (?) 20 publications, @Ollie123 ! Eight in a year is very impressive, especially on internship!

I had about 12 or 15 pubs when I applied for internship and I got this nonsense a few times too. No, I didn't live in my lab, ugh.
Yeah I encountered that here and there during internship and postdoc. But not for a long time now- once I had a real job, with other people also publishing regularly, people mostly are just complementary. I think it is probably a more common attitude in clinical settings.
 
I would hardly classify that rate of production as a graduate student as "typical". I've been very fortunate and able to produce a number of papers similar to what we're talking about here, half of them first author. In general, those types of numbers are not what to expect or compare yourself to. Consider, for instance, the number of publications expected of a tenure track professor and compare this to the rate of production for those graduate students. Or, consider highly prolific academics even (and consider how many opportunities they have that you do not).

It seems to me that there are a few things that make those numbers possible: are a very publish heavy faculty that has an inclusive attitude towards students, a longer program to develop the manuscripts, access to data/populations (development of that can take a substantial amount of time and energy), area of interest (some stuff just goes faster than others), and (honestly) a willingness to work some late hours above and beyond everything else. As Future says, don't insult, but there is also (on the flip side) some truth to those insults. Not everyone who pumps out moderate numbers does so at an equal rate of involvement/awareness of research process/etc as others with equal numbers might. Unfortunately, authorship order and number rarely reflect this.
 
I think it really depends on how one's cards fall and what opportunities people make for themselves. I was lucky to had someone tell me in my first season (in undergrad): "if you want to make a difference and have doors opened for you, you have to publish, even if you don't care about research." I didn't care about research but got on a bunch of research teams during undergrad. Those resulted in tens of presentations and 5 publications. Granted, I wasn't sole author, but our teams worked their a** off to get research completed before any of us graduated undergrad. It also helped that we had several faculty that made sure our studies didn't die because we were growing tired of the data. If I had my head on right, I would have conducted a study at masters program. But I was too busy with other life pursuits. It only is because of the undergrad publications, that 10 years later, I decided to get into a doc program. If I had been more intentional, I would have published at least 1 during masters. Now that I am in the doc program, I am choosing dissertation topic that is A) do-able and B) I can publish. I have full intention to publish. The road there is going to poster presentations this coming year as year 2 student. I was able to network at various conferences and found someone who is letting me use their data for dissertation. So I technically am not reinventing the wheel with my own data collection. The data available is so diverse that I can see several studies coming out of them for future publication.

For those who published with 10+ by the time they apply for internship it tells a few things about them: they sacrifice something for research, so don't be jelous; they may have had the good fortune of being with amazing chairs and research teams; and/or they have a special gift in seeing what is publishable and go after it. All in all, you can only admire these people and get them on your good side; you never know how these will be great colleagues to have. So throw the jealousy out the window because it will utterly be unhelpful to you. But rather seek these out and put them in your close networks. As far as competing for internship, although that is a few years down the line for me; I encourage you to take the advice of previous writers here: apply to places where you will be most competitive, especially to those who don't require high research publications. Pursue a match where your chances are highest. Who cares if you have more or less of a publication. What matters is matching and graduating!
 
1. Some labs can crank out publications...I did not come from a place like that. :laugh:

2. Quality of journal matters, as does type of publication (abstract v. article) and also authorship.

3. Having collaborators can really bump up publication #'s. I only eeked out 1 publication during grad school, but now I have active collaborators and I avg ~1 pub per yr as clinical faculty. Grind, grind, grind. It could be more if I pushed my fellows more to present and publish. Hmm….:laugh:

ps. We wish we could all publish like MCParent. :D
 
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Collaboration is indeed helpful, and (at least in my case) came along after I'd finished grad school. While still in my doctoral program, I was on a few other students' posters, while my smaller number of publications were primarily handled by me.

At least in my case, this worked out well. Early on, by performing first- and second-author work, I was able to become more intimately acquainted with the publication process from beginning to end while still having the support of my advisor and other grad students. This allowed me to then more efficiently collaborate further down the line, as I was better able to jump in at various stages in the process and help out as needed.
 
2. Quality of journal matters, as does type of publication (abstract v. article) and also authorship.

Do people really count published abstracts as equivalent to actual peer-reviewed articles? That seems really sketchy, honestly.
 
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I've seen people do it. Never quite understood why, since its always blatantly obvious. I'm guessing they just never gave their CV to anyone for feedback? It usually just depends on what conferences you submit to whether or not the abstracts end up published (e.g. in a supplemental issue). I don't even mention that the abstracts are published since I figure its just subsumed under the conference presentation, though as long as its clearly indicated I don't have a problem with folks doing so.

If published abstracts count - 12 publications would actually sound kind of low for a research-focused person!
 
Before enrolling in my doc program, I worked with an advanced student who had ~12 pubs before applying to internship, so going into grad school, I thought that was pretty normal. Regardless, my goal is to try and maintain 2-3 pubs per year, with hopefully ~1/3 as 1st author. Our lab is pretty productive (with a small staff), which I guess is a plus, but it's a relief to know that 12 is *not* actually the norm.
 
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