How do you guys have so many publications?

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anbuitachi

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I see everyone on here saying they have X # of publications, and I also saw that that the average # of publication is quite high according to the official data. Is there any "trick" to getting publications that I'm not aware of? [I did 3 years of malaria research in college, and spent summer of MS1, and MS2 school year doing research [GI], which neither resulted in anything]. My dad is a researcher [phd] and he said my expectations are way too high. He said on average, people publish a paper once every 1-2 years in the lab he works in, and some MD/PhD students finish their PhD portions without even publishing a single paper. Yet we see all these applicants applying to Rad Onc with like 5 papers or more... How do I do this?! I feel like the only thing standing in my way between matching in a decent specialty [possibly Rad Onc] is the lack of research publications/abstracts... [I have 0] thanks!! any advice is greatly appreciated

[And unrelated question - Can Rad Oncs open private practices?? Is this common/easy to do?]

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I see everyone on here saying they have X # of publications, and I also saw that that the average # of publication is quite high according to the official data. Is there any "trick" to getting publications that I'm not aware of? [I did 3 years of malaria research in college, and spent summer of MS1, and MS2 school year doing research [GI], which neither resulted in anything]. My dad is a researcher [phd] and he said my expectations are way too high. He said on average, people publish a paper once every 1-2 years in the lab he works in, and some MD/PhD students finish their PhD portions without even publishing a single paper. Yet we see all these applicants applying to Rad Onc with like 5 papers or more... How do I do this?! I feel like the only thing standing in my way between matching in a decent specialty [possibly Rad Onc] is the lack of research publications/abstracts... [I have 0] thanks!! any advice is greatly appreciated

I will let the recent med student grads answer this.

[And unrelated question - Can Rad Oncs open private practices?? Is this common/easy to do?]

Yes. This was discussed recently.
 
Two thoughts:

1. The research publications section in the data includes abstracts and any paper your name is on, not just first author manuscripts. If you take that into account, 5 is not an unreasonable number.

2. There is a big difference in the frequency of publication between a basic science lab and clinical research. It is reasonable to generate a publication in a few months if you are simply doing chart review research, which is what many med students are doing.

A lot of it depends on the research infrastructure at your institution. Some places will have projects queued up for med students to jump into, or available databases to work with. These things make generating publications much easier.
 
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I wouldn't be so quick to degrade the promised land otherwise known as basic science. Yes, its a bummer to do research and not get any publications (regardless of the branch of research), but I know several people who got really good residency positions with only a signal publication (... albeit in Nature or somewhere comparatively amazing). Try not to focus on the number of publications; as noted above, a lot of that is inflated thanks to middle authorships which vary in incidence from institution to institution. So if you're passionate about basic science (and yes, its hard), then keep doing it. But if you're only really passionate about getting into a radiation oncology residency... and you're interested in going into private practice... then stick with clinical projects because the downside is typically a bad publication (which is arguable better than no publication).
 
I wouldn't be so quick to degrade the promised land otherwise known as basic science. Yes, its a bummer to do research and not get any publications (regardless of the branch of research), but I know several people who got really good residency positions with only a signal publication (... albeit in Nature or somewhere comparatively amazing). Try not to focus on the number of publications; as noted above, a lot of that is inflated thanks to middle authorships which vary in incidence from institution to institution. So if you're passionate about basic science (and yes, its hard), then keep doing it. But if you're only really passionate about getting into a radiation oncology residency... and you're interested in going into private practice... then stick with clinical projects because the downside is typically a bad publication (which is arguable better than no publication).

Totally agree. Kinetics of clinical may be faster but good basic science can go a long way. What ever you do be able to explain it well and apply it, not just regurgitate an abstract.
 
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true i agree.. i dont mind basic but its really hard to find time to do it for long time as a med student esp with no pubs!

thanks for everyones inputss!!
 
... and if you find its hard to do basic science as a medical student, just wait until you're a resident!
 
Seriously... Although I appreciate residency more, there is barely enough time to read. Good thing we have SDN to take up more of my time!
 
Without a dedicated year there isn't really a way to do meaningful basic research as a resident, I think we can all agree on that.
 
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