A question about your research

[little_late_MD]

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I have a question for everyone here who has published research. During my senior year I competed an independent research project in economics. My mentor/advisor/professor told me that in order to have it published it would have to go through the same peer review as every other journal article. He told me this could take anywhere from 6 mos to a year, and would require a lot of rewriting , editing, submissions, etc. I would also face a tough road b/c I did not have the credentials behind me. He said that he would co-author the paper with me, but it would take quite some time, as he would have to add his own research, which would start the process all over.

My question for you pre-meds who have been published is this: How and where are you published? Are you the only/primary author? Is it in a peer-reviewed journal or your univeristy's newspaper? How long did it take?

I'm finding it hard to understand how so many undergraduates could be published in peer-reviewed journals while maintaining a full course load.

 

[g3pro]

The ones who have really good publications are master's students of phd students who've been doing research for a very long time. Undergrads who have authorship on a paper either have it accepted into a sh*tty journal or were not involved heavily in the process and are just tagging along with grad students.

The number of truly excellent undergrad researchers who are published in great journals such as the PNAS and were involved in the the principal investigation is close to zero.

And then you have the supposed clinical researchers who tag onto physicians and get published in whatever journal they want, talking about statistical correlations and whatever.

How do undergrads get published? They find a lab which allows co-authorship to undergrads who prepare solutions and whatever.

 

[Bluntman]

LOL...well said g3pro. Hilarious, but 100% true. 👍

 

[63768]

g3pro, that's not always true. granted i have graduated already and am conducting research fulltime but undergrads can really become published and do not always tag along.

i have on paper on variants in shoulder anatomy and subsequent pathology, submitted to Arthroscopy, one of the top five sports medicine journals. i performed data acquisition and analysis and wrote a portion of the discussion. this journal takes about 1.5 to 2 years to go through peer review to publishing.

i also have a paper about to be submitted to journal of bone and joint surgery, which should take about 2 years to publish.

it is very difficult to conduct a major research project while having a full courseload. i like you did an indep economics project and it alone took a full semester. though it was not published, it would have been publishable material had i had more time to put into it.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

I've got an article submitted to Psychosomatics. I'm the sole author and I am the primary investigator for my project as far as publications go (I do have a professor "overseeing" (read as: signing the funding request forms and IRB paperwork). Yes, most undergrads either write for rather crappy journals or are simply "add-on" authors, but there are a very few of us who actually do our own research and manage to do something that is not simply application padding. But for the most part, you are- as always- correct g3pro

 

[dilated]

The number of truly excellent undergrad researchers who are published in great journals such as the PNAS and were involved in the the principal investigation is close to zero.

Depends. I had a first author in a good journal accepted for pub, but it is true that as an undergrad the nature of the game is that you're going to be applying with a "submitted for acceptance" or at best "accepted for publication" because of the ridiculously long lag time for publications. Whether you can get even that depends much more on your field and PI than personal badassness.

 

[Darth Asclepius]

They find a lab which allows co-authorship to undergrads who prepare solutions and whatever.

I have to agree that this is not true. Most undergrads don't devote significant time to research, but those who do often contribute a lot to the work. Most undergrads will not be first author and certainly not the only author (as the PI would get the funding and their name on the paper, even if the undergrad did most of the work), but there are some who do get their names on papers for doing a lot more than preparing solutions (and I hope nobody is putting someone's name on a paper that only does that kind of stuff because many undergrads work their butts off on research and don't even get published).