Can residency PDs tell the difference between higher and lower impact journals?

[psyspy]

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Just based on the journal titles?

 

[Redpancreas]

If they care to look, then yes. If they care about research, they will look. Many won't care and just let the numbers pile up.

 

[AlteredScale]

If the PD is involved heavily in basic or clinical research and you happen to publish within their field they will likely know which ones are more impactful.

 

[operaman]

For journals in their field, absolutely.

For subspecialty journals in another field, probably not.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

At academic residencies, especially T20, absolutely. If the PD is heavily involved in research, they'll likely have a decent sense of whether your work is impactful.

Even outside of the field, it's easy to separate fluff from involved research, and you do eventually get a sense of journal impact from titles alone if you do enough research.

Fluff is obvious from the titles. Case reports. Surveys. Titles that sound more like essays than manuscripts. For instance "Medical Students in the OR: how many is too many?"

Low impact journals are often newer and scraping the bottom of the barrel for titles, because the obvious ones are taken. For instance, Journal of Biomaterials Applications vs. Biomaterials (IF 2 vs 12). Also, journals called "The International Journal of..." are typically low impact.

High impact journals are often part of a journal family or have very generic names. So you have journals like Nature Communications, JAMA Surgery, Cell Stem Cell, and Annals of Internal Medicine, which are all part of prestigious journal families. In fact, Nature and Cell Press have a lot of journals they don't put the "Nature" or "Cell" tag on. It's like Toyota branding Lexus differently so it feels more luxurious. Then you have journals like Cancer Research, which are sort of obviously high impact because any journal with that name must have some history.

That's not to say you can't get fooled. Materials Today is apparently super high impact, and it's named like some sort of predatory open access fee-scraping project. Similarly, Cells feels like it should be high impact, but it's a pretty mid-range journal and basically a knock-off of Cell.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

It’s pretty easy to find out.

Journal Citation Reports | Clarivate

Our world-leading Journal Citation Reports are transparent, publisher-neutral, detailed and data rich, allowing you to make confident decisions. Read more.

clarivate.com

Every PD has access.

The better question is do they really care.

 

[aldol16]

Residency PDs are doctors too. They read academic articles and they most likely have their own research going on. Everybody will be familiar with the top journals in their field as well as the top medical journals overall (e.g., JAMA). They won't know the top journals in other specialties if you did research in those fields.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

It’s pretty easy to find out.

Journal Citation Reports | Clarivate

Our world-leading Journal Citation Reports are transparent, publisher-neutral, detailed and data rich, allowing you to make confident decisions. Read more.

clarivate.com

Every PD has access.

The better question is do they really care.

They likely don't have the time to search for impact factors of journals when sifting through hundreds or thousands of applications. This is why I mentioned being able to feel out journal impact and fluff vs. serious research. I'm an MSTP student, but in just a few years of being immersed in research/science, it's pretty easy to feel out a med student's CV. Between these four fake publications in fake journals:

1) "Comparative durability of three commercially available finger splints." J. Orthopedic Devices.

2) "Medical student attitudes on extended training pathways in a safety net teaching hospital: An analysis of sentiment." J. Educational Research Methods.

3) "CD4+ T cell subsets differentiate to Th1 phenotypes in hot vs. cold murine lung tumors." Cell Immunology.

4) "Maternal perinatal outcomes after TBI in the third trimester: A retrospective cohort study." Obstetrics.

Any PD worth their salt should be able to look at these studies and say that in terms of time, effort, and rigor, these manuscripts roughly rank 3, 4, 1, 2.

3 is likely a high impact immunology study completed by a team of full-time researchers in a wet lab that took several years to complete. 4 is likely a rigorous analysis of outcomes published in a decent journal that took several months to complete with part-time work. 1 is likely a short paper with 2-3 single-graph figures in a low-impact field-specific journal. 2 is medical student fluff research.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

They likely don't have the time to search for impact factors of journals when sifting through hundreds or thousands of applications. This is why I mentioned being able to feel out journal impact and fluff vs. serious research. I'm an MSTP student, but in just a few years of being immersed in research/science, it's pretty easy to feel out a med student's CV. Between these four fake publications in fake journals:

1) "Comparative durability of three commercially available finger splints." J. Orthopedic Devices.

2) "Medical student attitudes on extended training pathways in a safety net teaching hospital: An analysis of sentiment." J. Educational Research Methods.

3) "CD4+ T cell subsets differentiate to Th1 phenotypes in hot vs. cold murine lung tumors." Cell Immunology.

4) "Maternal perinatal outcomes after TBI in the third trimester: A retrospective cohort study." Obstetrics.

Any PD worth their salt should be able to look at these studies and say that in terms of time, effort, and rigor, these manuscripts roughly rank 3, 4, 1, 2.

3 is likely a high impact immunology study completed by a team of full-time researchers in a wet lab that took several years to complete. 4 is likely a rigorous analysis of outcomes published in a decent journal that took several months to complete with part-time work. 1 is likely a short paper with 2-3 single-graph figures in a low-impact field-specific journal. 2 is medical student fluff research.

Searching JCR takes less than 1 minute. But again… do they actually care is the real question.

When I review applications, I look for a PMID. If it doesn’t have that… I consider it as meaningful as publishing in the National Inquirer. Beyond that, I’m not sure it means a lot. I mean, honestly, the role of students in research most negligible at best. A student emails a faculty the faculty says, here’s this data I came across, write it up, it gets written up and published. None of that is actual hard work on the role of the student. Most PD can, or should, recognize that.

This is all very specialty specific of course.

 

[psyspy]

At academic residencies, especially T20, absolutely. If the PD is heavily involved in research, they'll likely have a decent sense of whether your work is impactful.

Even outside of the field, it's easy to separate fluff from involved research, and you do eventually get a sense of journal impact from titles alone if you do enough research.

Fluff is obvious from the titles. Case reports. Surveys. Titles that sound more like essays than manuscripts. For instance "Medical Students in the OR: how many is too many?"

Low impact journals are often newer and scraping the bottom of the barrel for titles, because the obvious ones are taken. For instance, Journal of Biomaterials Applications vs. Biomaterials (IF 2 vs 12). Also, journals called "The International Journal of..." are typically low impact.

High impact journals are often part of a journal family or have very generic names. So you have journals like Nature Communications, JAMA Surgery, Cell Stem Cell, and Annals of Internal Medicine, which are all part of prestigious journal families. In fact, Nature and Cell Press have a lot of journals they don't put the "Nature" or "Cell" tag on. It's like Toyota branding Lexus differently so it feels more luxurious. Then you have journals like Cancer Research, which are sort of obviously high impact because any journal with that name must have some history.

That's not to say you can't get fooled. Materials Today is apparently super high impact, and it's named like some sort of predatory open access fee-scraping project. Similarly, Cells feels like it should be high impact, but it's a pretty mid-range journal and basically a knock-off of Cell.

Yea, my gut tells me the same thing. If I can look at journal names, manuscript titles, and authors listed, and I can tell its probably less cited and thus "lower impact" work, I would think actual faculty could do the same

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

Searching JCR takes less than 1 minute. But again… do they actually care is the real question.

When I review applications, I look for a PMID. If it doesn’t have that… I consider it as meaningful as publishing in the National Inquirer. Beyond that, I’m not sure it means a lot.

This is all very specialty specific of course.

There are pretty good arguments for not caring. Outside of MSTP or very productive research years, most med student research is fluff or dependent on someone else's productivity. I've seen a lot of idiots dragged kicking and screaming to a string of middle-author publications, and I've seen competent people waste valuable time with unproductive mentors.

I think being a middle author on a high quality publication means you've been exposed to the research process and proven yourself useful in some capacity, the range there is very wide. Being a first author on any non-fluff publication is an indication that you can actually drive a project on your own (with guidance from a senior author). Having 15 fluff publications on your resume means you don't care about research and treat it like a game.

 

[psyspy]

Do you all think at some point, fluff research will amount to abosolutely zero for residency apps? There are way too many fluff journals out there, and it seems like a massive waste of time for everyone involved for PDs to hold any regard for the fluff research, especially if the med students doing it are just doing it solely to pad their apps? I'm even surprised at the large number physician faculty who choose to publish in low impact journals. I would've thought it was the same kind of "publish or perish" expectation like in other academic outside medicine. Could be entirely off base here, idk

 

[psyspy]

At academic residencies, especially T20, absolutely. If the PD is heavily involved in research, they'll likely have a decent sense of whether your work is impactful.

Even outside of the field, it's easy to separate fluff from involved research, and you do eventually get a sense of journal impact from titles alone if you do enough research.

Fluff is obvious from the titles. Case reports. Surveys. Titles that sound more like essays than manuscripts. For instance "Medical Students in the OR: how many is too many?"

Low impact journals are often newer and scraping the bottom of the barrel for titles, because the obvious ones are taken. For instance, Journal of Biomaterials Applications vs. Biomaterials (IF 2 vs 12). Also, journals called "The International Journal of..." are typically low impact.

High impact journals are often part of a journal family or have very generic names. So you have journals like Nature Communications, JAMA Surgery, Cell Stem Cell, and Annals of Internal Medicine, which are all part of prestigious journal families. In fact, Nature and Cell Press have a lot of journals they don't put the "Nature" or "Cell" tag on. It's like Toyota branding Lexus differently so it feels more luxurious. Then you have journals like Cancer Research, which are sort of obviously high impact because any journal with that name must have some history.

That's not to say you can't get fooled. Materials Today is apparently super high impact, and it's named like some sort of predatory open access fee-scraping project. Similarly, Cells feels like it should be high impact, but it's a pretty mid-range journal and basically a knock-off of Cell.

HAH. Never seen "Cells" before. Thanks for that tip

 

[SurfingDoctor]

There are pretty good arguments for not caring. Outside of MSTP or very productive research years, most med student research is fluff or dependent on someone else's productivity. I've seen a lot of idiots dragged kicking and screaming to a string of middle-author publications, and I've seen competent people waste valuable time with unproductive mentors.

I think being a middle author on a high quality publication means you've been exposed to the research process and proven yourself useful in some capacity, the range there is very wide. Being a first author on any non-fluff publication is an indication that you can actually drive a project on your own (with guidance from a senior author). Having 15 fluff publications on your resume means you don't care about research and treat it like a game.

Middle authorship, generally speaking, is a sign that someone was looking out for you. I mean, it’s nice that someone was doing it, but that’s about it. It really says more about the senior author than anyone else.

Alternatively, if you’re really established, middle authorship is a political favor. But that not applicable to this discussion.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

Do you all think at some point, fluff research will amount to abosolutely zero for residency apps? There are way too many fluff journals out there, and it seems like a massive waste of time for everyone involved for PDs to hold any regard for the fluff research, especially if the med students doing it are just doing it solely to pad their apps? I'm even surprised at the large number physician faculty who choose to publish in low impact journals. I would've thought it was the same kind of "publish or perish" expectation like in other academic outside medicine. Could be entirely off base here, idk

Read most posts from MD-students on this forum and compare them to the way @SurfingDoctor judges research output and applications. Med students like numbers, and 5 is bigger than 2. Publications are important in themselves, but ultimately they are a means to an end for your eventual employer. That end is grant money. Fluff will never get you an R01 or any major grant, no matter how much you have. A single great study, even in a field-specific journal, can earn you an R01 or other major research grant.

I came into my MSTP program with a single first author pub in a respected, but middle-impact journal (IF ~5). I desperately wanted a to do a "5 first author PhD," so I would have the number of first author papers I perceived as necessary to get a K-award. I was very confused with everyone's advice to "just publish a paper," and I was frustrated by my PI pushing me to keep collecting data. I kept thinking, "I am 27 years old and have only a single paper. This is embarrassing." I just wanted to fill out my resume.

I now realize that MD/PhDs often get K-awards with just a few papers to their name. There are med students out there with fuller CVs than junior faculty, but the content of those CVs matters much more. When people say, "just publish a paper" they mean "publish a great, novel first author paper in a 10+ IF journal that could get you a grant some day."

Middle authorship, generally speaking, is a sign that someone was looking out for you. I mean, it’s nice that someone was doing it, but that’s about it.

Alternatively, if you’re really established, middle authorship is a political favor. But that not applicable to this discussion.

I somewhat disagree. In the lab it means you've got good hands and a useful skillset. My middle author pubs have come from papers in which I contributed 1-2 figures (usually 0.5-1 main figure, 1 supplemental figure). In clinical research it means you acted as a data or chart monkey for a little while. If nothing else, some resident had a bit less grunt work to do, and you'll be a bit quicker on the uptake when it comes time to produce first author work as a resident. My own papers' middle authors have all done something useful for me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I have used a "threshold of usefulness" as a carrot/stick for a particularly stubborn/lazy PhD student that was hoping her mere presence would be enough for second authorship. Eventually she became a contributing member of the team, and she would not have been an author otherwise.

 

[Lawpy]

Just based on the journal titles?

Yes it’s easy to search. The question is whether PDs care.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Read most posts from MD-students on this forum and compare them to the way @SurfingDoctor judges research output and applications. Med students like numbers, and 5 is bigger than 2. Publications are important in themselves, but ultimately they are a means to an end for your eventual employer. That end is grant money. Fluff will never get you an R01 or any major grant, no matter how much you have. A single great study, even in a field-specific journal, can earn you an R01 or other major research grant.

I came into my MSTP program with a single first author pub in a respected, but middle-impact journal (IF ~5). I desperately wanted a to do a "5 first author PhD," so I would have the number of first author papers I perceived as necessary to get a K-award. I was very confused with everyone's advice to "just publish a paper," and I was frustrated by my PI pushing me to keep collecting data. I kept thinking, "I am 27 years old and have only a single paper. This is embarrassing." I just wanted to fill out my resume.

I now realize that MD/PhDs often get K-awards with just a few papers to their name. There are med students out there with fuller CVs than junior faculty, but the content of those CVs matters much more. When people say, "just publish a paper" they mean "publish a great, novel first author paper in a 10+ IF journal that could get you a grant some day."

I somewhat disagree. In the lab it means you've got good hands and a useful skillset. My middle author pubs have come from papers in which I contributed 1-2 figures (usually 0.5-1 main figure, 1 supplemental figure). In clinical research it means you acted as a data or chart monkey for a little while. If nothing else, some resident had a bit less grunt work to do, and you'll be a bit quicker on the uptake when it comes time to produce first author work as a resident. My own papers' middle authors have all done something useful for me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I have used a "threshold of usefulness" as a carrot/stick for a particularly stubborn/lazy PhD student that was hoping her mere presence would be enough for second authorship. Eventually she became a contributing member of the team, and she would not have been an author otherwise.

0.5 figures generally means someone else could have just as well done it, but again, someone was looking out for you to get you on that paper. Learning science skills and techniques is really not that hard. Its like following a recipe and many people can be taught to do that.

Honestly, it’s more that the sign of a mentor who wants to get on the paper in the hopes you generally succeed… not a reflection of contribution. And frankly, that’s what a mentor should be doing.

As a slight disgression, having sat on a number of K study sections, if I had to ballpark, the average number of first author publications for a highly scored K award is about 3 to 5.

 

[Lawpy]

0.5 figures generally means someone else could have just as well done it, but again, someone was looking out for you to get you on that paper. Learning science skills and techniques is really not that hard. Its like following a recipe and many people can be taught to do that.

Honestly, it’s more that the sign of a mentor who wants to get on the paper in the hopes you generally succeed… not a reflection of contribution. And frankly, that’s what a mentor should be doing.

As a slight disgression, having sat on a number of K study sections, if I had to ballpark, the average number of first author publications for a highly scored K award is about 3 to 5.

Agreed and that’s why middle author papers should be viewed favorably especially when supported by a strong letter from the research mentors.

 

[Lawpy]

Read most posts from MD-students on this forum and compare them to the way @SurfingDoctor judges research output and applications. Med students like numbers, and 5 is bigger than 2. Publications are important in themselves, but ultimately they are a means to an end for your eventual employer. That end is grant money. Fluff will never get you an R01 or any major grant, no matter how much you have. A single great study, even in a field-specific journal, can earn you an R01 or other major research grant.

I came into my MSTP program with a single first author pub in a respected, but middle-impact journal (IF ~5). I desperately wanted a to do a "5 first author PhD," so I would have the number of first author papers I perceived as necessary to get a K-award. I was very confused with everyone's advice to "just publish a paper," and I was frustrated by my PI pushing me to keep collecting data. I kept thinking, "I am 27 years old and have only a single paper. This is embarrassing." I just wanted to fill out my resume.

I now realize that MD/PhDs often get K-awards with just a few papers to their name. There are med students out there with fuller CVs than junior faculty, but the content of those CVs matters much more. When people say, "just publish a paper" they mean "publish a great, novel first author paper in a 10+ IF journal that could get you a grant some day."

I believe basic science work + actually good prospective clinical studies and engineering stuff are what leads to getting the R grants. Garbage clinical studies churned out by med students and encouraged by PDs in this broken residency application process benefits no one besides predatory journals

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

0.5 figures generally means someone else could have just as well done it, but again, someone was looking out for you to get you on that paper.

Honestly, that’s the sign of a mentor who wants to get on the paper in the hopes you generally succeed… not a reflection of contribution.

Again, I disagree. Someone had to collect that data, and it was going to be the person who can complete it most efficiently. If that person isn't the first author, then some middle author will usefully contribute.

I suppose the first author organic chemist with no cell culture experience who wrote the paper I'm editing now could have learned primary human macrophage culture, flow cytometry, and qPCR to put together that figure, but... that makes no sense.

I have another middle author pub from advising someone who wanted to apply his technology to my field, but didn't know the basics enough to put together any rigorous studies. My PI was similarly clueless, so he brought me on to plan the paper figure-by-figure and do some assay development. I don't think anyone else in the lab could have done that.

Other papers have been favors, for sure. A friend of mine wanted some complicated flow cytometry data and "didn't feel like learning to properly compensate" his experiments... 5th author paper.

Now, the work I did is nowhere close to what was required of my first author pubs, but most of my middle author pubs come from real contributions.

I also greatly, greatly disagree with the idea that my mentor wants me to succeed. He is an ignorant, selfish, psychopathic a**hat who has literally been successfully sued by multiple students for stealing and commercializing their work and using the massive wealth and power disparity to cut out their equity stakes upon exit. He's also a huge name in the field, so no one can really do anything about it. I don't get a single thing in that lab unless I can apply leverage to get it, and you need to be useful to someone to apply that leverage.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Again, I disagree. Someone had to collect that data, and it was going to be the person who can complete it most efficiently. If that person isn't the first author, then some middle author will usefully contribute.

I suppose the first author organic chemist with no cell culture experience who wrote the paper I'm editing now could have learned primary human macrophage culture, flow cytometry, and qPCR to put together that figure, but... that makes no sense.

I have another middle author pub from advising someone who wanted to apply his technology to my field, but didn't know the basics enough to put together any rigorous studies. My PI was similarly clueless, so he brought me on to plan the paper figure-by-figure and do some assay development. I don't think anyone else in the lab could have done that.

Other papers have been favors, for sure. A friend of mine wanted some complicated flow cytometry data and "didn't feel like learning to properly compensate" his experiments... 5th author paper.

Now, the work I did is nowhere close to what was required of my first author pubs, but most of my middle author pubs come from real contributions.

I also greatly, greatly disagree with the idea that my mentor wants me to succeed. He is an ignorant, selfish, psychopathic a**hat who has literally been successfully sued by multiple students for stealing and commercializing their work and using the massive wealth and power disparity to cut out their equity stakes upon exit. He's also a huge name in the field, so no one can really do anything about it. I don't get a single thing in that lab unless I can apply leverage to get it, and you need to be useful to someone to apply that leverage.

I can only speak from my own experience. Most times I put someone in the middle, it’s a gift authorship. I guess, maybe on occasion they contributed to what amounted to a couple hours of work, but it was at most advice or it was work I could have done, but let them do it under instruction to get their name on a paper. Thus, I view middle authorships in general as gift authorships. I will tell you NIH study sections feel the same. This is especially true as the number of authors on a publication increases.

This is all in contrast to promotion or admission committees on the other hand, as they can only count number of publications…

And yes, it is amazing how many senior scientists are inept are cultivating trainees and junior scientists. Heck, my K “mentor” never once read any publication I ever published… and they were the last author because they had to be. Being the first or last author AND the corresponding author is the determining factor of who was really driving the ship.

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

I can only speak from my own experience. Most times I put someone in the middle, it’s a gift authorship. I guess, maybe on occasion they contributed to what amounted to a couple hours of work, but it was at most advice or it was work I could have done, but let them do it under instruction to get their name on a paper. Thus, I view middle authorships in general as gift authorships. I will tell you NIH study sections feel the same. Heck, my K “mentor” never once read any publication I ever published… and they were the last author because they had to be. Being the first or last author AND the corresponding author is the determining factor of who was really driving the ship.

This is all in contrast to promotion committees on the other hand, as they can only count number of publications…

I think middle authorship is different if you are a student vs. faculty. 5th from the end on a big paper as faculty means you joined the occasional lab meeting and maybe contributed some equipment. In my lab, second authors usually do substantial lab work, often as a first assist on the whole project. This is usually a 2nd or 3rd year PhD student who has been mentored by an older student upon entering the lab. Third authors also do substantial lab work, at least several months part-time work on assays and they are involved with the editing process. Beyond that it's quite variable and contributions are exponentially less significant.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

I think middle authorship is different if you are a student vs. faculty. 5th from the end on a big paper as faculty means you joined the occasional lab meeting and maybe contributed some equipment. In my lab, second authors usually do substantial lab work, often as a first assist on the whole project. This is usually a 2nd or 3rd year PhD student who has been mentored by an older student upon entering the lab. Third authors also do substantial lab work, at least several months part-time work on assays and they are involved with the editing process. Beyond that it's quite variable and contributions are exponentially less significant.

Authorship has also changed as time has gone on. To me, co-first or last authors are signs of significant contribution. Beyond that, if you aren’t listed as a co-first author or last author, your place in the middle is all the same. In fact, some journals require it to be by alphabetical order of the last name if you aren’t first or last.

Alphabetical ordering of author surnames in academic publishing: A detriment to teamwork

Introduction In academia, many institutions use journal article publication productivity for making decisions on tenure and promotion, funding grants, and rewarding stellar scholars. Although non-alphabetical sequencing of article coauthoring by the spelling of surnames signals the extent to...

journals.plos.org

This is a study on business journals, but it happens in science journals too.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Not really germane to the OP, but in general...

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

The reality is that first and last authors are really the only standardized convention. The rest is a crapshoot that could be as much as you did the second most amount of work to you were in the same room as the people who actually did the work and they took pity on you... and no one can discern the difference by reading the paper's author list.

 

[Lawpy]

Not really germane to the OP, but in general...

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

The reality is that first and last authors are really the only standardized convention. The rest is a crapshoot that could be as much as you did the second most amount of work to you were in the same room as the people who actually did the work and they took pity on you... and no one can discern the difference by reading the paper's author list.

The question is then how much does this really matter at residency application level? Because a truly good first author paper as a med student is rare. And only MD/PhD applicants can churn out high quality basic science papers

 

[Lawpy]

I also greatly, greatly disagree with the idea that my mentor wants me to succeed. He is an ignorant, selfish, psychopathic a**hat who has literally been successfully sued by multiple students for stealing and commercializing their work and using the massive wealth and power disparity to cut out their equity stakes upon exit. He's also a huge name in the field, so no one can really do anything about it. I don't get a single thing in that lab unless I can apply leverage to get it, and you need to be useful to someone to apply that leverage.

Oof that’s unfortunate, i’m sorry. Mentorship is so critical but it’s a tragedy of science that popular scientists who are horrible mentors are a thing

 

[SurfingDoctor]

The question is then how much does this really matter at residency application level? Because a truly good first author paper as a med student is rare. And only MD/PhD applicants can churn out high quality basic science papers

That why I said not germane to the OP. It was literally the first sentence.

 

[Lawpy]

Outside of MSTP or very productive research years, most med student research is fluff or dependent on someone else's productivity. I've seen a lot of idiots dragged kicking and screaming to a string of middle-author publications, and I've seen competent people waste valuable time with unproductive mentors.

There’s a lot of garbage pumped out in research years in surgical subs/derm. Where research is actually good is done at MSTP or in some truly niche field like engineering or computer science

 

[ChordaEpiphany]

Authorship has also changed as time has gone on. To me, co-first or last authors are signs of significant contribution. Beyond that, if you aren’t listed as a co-first author or last author, your place in the middle is all the same. In fact, some journals require it to be by alphabetical order of the last name if you aren’t first or last.

Maybe it's field-specific. Literally no one I work with would agree with this statement, and I don't know any journals in my field that list authors alphabetically outside of massive initiatives (like the human genome project or CERN papers). We've even had people bicker over second vs. third authorship, though I think that's silly.

In my mind it's always been 1st >>> 2nd > middle. Even within middle we generally rank by contribution. For instance, a paper we published last week it was:

Co-first authors: Conceptualization + one did the in vitro work and the other did the in vivo work.
Third author: Pathology resident who processed all tissues ex-vivo, prepped them for histology, scored them, and then prepped them for further analysis by a CRO. Wrote that section of the paper.
Fourth author (me): Conceptualized ~6 main figure panels (0.75 figures-ish) and 2 supplemental figures. Spent ~1 month (part-time effort) optimizing the study and collecting data. Wrote the methods section and read/edited the results/discussion.
Fifth author: Lab tech who assisted the first author on a few cumbersome experiments over about 2 months. No writing.
Sixth author: PhD student who did one day of microscopy. No writing.
Seventh author: Former grad student who had some old data lying around that proved to be useful. No writing.
Eight and Ninth authors: Co-corresponding PIs of the two co-first authors.

So it does seem like some consideration was given to contribution, even in the middle. Next to a first author paper, all other authorships pale in comparison, but middle authors are quite useful and deserve some credit. If I didn't have middle authors on my papers I'd have to learn to do mouse surgery, mouse echocardiography, mini pig surgery, several materials characterization techniques, and a lot of chemistry. My middle authors definitely deserve some credit on my studies.

The question is then how much does this really matter at residency application level? Because a truly good first author paper as a med student is rare. And only MD/PhD applicants can churn out high quality basic science papers

If I were judging med students for residency I would consider

1) A useful contribution, meaning some authorship. I know @SurfingDoctor disagrees, but at the med student level it at least means you were involved enough to know the process. You'll pick up research and the review/writing process just a bit quicker, most likely, and it shows some initiative.
2) Overall research goals/fit for the program. I don't want to take a class that's 80% focused on QI when it's only 20% of our research output.
3) Letters from their mentors (though that can be hit or miss, as some mentors are more generous in their praise than others).

My discussion with @SurfingDoctor is really just for fun at this point. If I've derailed the thread too much I can back off.

Oof that’s unfortunate, i’m sorry. Mentorship is so critical but it’s a tragedy of science that popular scientists who are horrible mentors are a thing

It's an interesting experience, and it has its pros and cons. I have managed to use his clout to endear myself to other big wig mentors who have been much more supportive.

There’s a lot of garbage pumped out in research years in surgical subs/derm. Where research is actually good is done at MSTP or in some truly niche field like engineering or computer science

Mostly agree, especially in surgery. I'm frequently frustrated with publication of anecdotes or stories in academic journals. If your paper has no actual data, it belongs in the op-ed section, not an academic journal taking up as much space on your CV as a Science paper. However, I know some people who've gotten involved in actual projects. Clinical research is still necessary and useful. A lot of the actually good stuff happens at big academic centers, where they can get enough patients (and recruit enough patients) to do high-powered prospective studies. Med students rarely do great first author research over a single research year, but I'd rather have students helping on real research (and learning what real research is supposed to look like) than pumping out BS for the sake of having a first author pub.

Also, as an engineer, who are you calling niche? Bro our stuff is literally all over the place, and biomedical engineering is one of the most active and well-funded areas of biomedical research.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Maybe it's field-specific. Literally no one I work with would agree with this statement, and I don't know any journals in my field that list authors alphabetically outside of massive initiatives (like the human genome project or CERN papers). We've even had people bicker over second vs. third authorship, though I think that's silly.

In my mind it's always been 1st >>> 2nd > middle. Even within middle we generally rank by contribution. For instance, a paper we published last week it was:

Co-first authors: Conceptualization + one did the in vitro work and the other did the in vivo work.
Third author: Pathology resident who processed all tissues ex-vivo, prepped them for histology, scored them, and then prepped them for further analysis by a CRO. Wrote that section of the paper.
Fourth author (me): Conceptualized ~6 main figure panels (0.75 figures-ish) and 2 supplemental figures. Spent ~1 month (part-time effort) optimizing the study and collecting data. Wrote the methods section and read/edited the results/discussion.
Fifth author: Lab tech who assisted the first author on a few cumbersome experiments over about 2 months. No writing.
Sixth author: PhD student who did one day of microscopy. No writing.
Seventh author: Former grad student who had some old data lying around that proved to be useful. No writing.
Eight and Ninth authors: Co-corresponding PIs of the two co-first authors.

So it does seem like some consideration was given to contribution, even in the middle. Next to a first author paper, all other authorships pale in comparison, but middle authors are quite useful and deserve some credit. If I didn't have middle authors on my papers I'd have to learn to do mouse surgery, mouse echocardiography, mini pig surgery, several materials characterization techniques, and a lot of chemistry. My middle authors definitely deserve some credit on my studies.

If I were judging med students for residency I would consider

1) A useful contribution, meaning some authorship. I know @SurfingDoctor disagrees, but at the med student level it at least means you were involved enough to know the process. You'll pick up research and the review/writing process just a bit quicker, most likely, and it shows some initiative.
2) Overall research goals/fit for the program. I don't want to take a class that's 80% focused on QI when it's only 20% of our research output.
3) Letters from their mentors (though that can be hit or miss, as some mentors are more generous in their praise than others).

My discussion with @SurfingDoctor is really just for fun at this point. If I've derailed the thread too much I can back off.

It's an interesting experience, and it has its pros and cons. I have managed to use his clout to endear myself to other big wig mentors who have been much more supportive.

Mostly agree, especially in surgery. I'm frequently frustrated with publication of anecdotes or stories in academic journals. If your paper has no actual data, it belongs in the op-ed section, not an academic journal taking up as much space on your CV as a Science paper. However, I know some people who've gotten involved in actual projects. Clinical research is still necessary and useful. A lot of the actually good stuff happens at big academic centers, where they can get enough patients (and recruit enough patients) to do high-powered prospective studies. Med students rarely do great first author research over a single research year, but I'd rather have students helping on real research (and learning what real research is supposed to look like) than pumping out BS for the sake of having a first author pub.

Also, as an engineer, who are you calling niche? Bro our stuff is literally all over the place, and biomedical engineering is one of the most active and well-funded areas of biomedical research.

Actually, the benefits from having bad mentors is 1) it drives independence and 2) if you succeed despite it… you’re kinda golden.

“The person most invested in your success is you…” - a research “mentor”

Just my very personal obsevation.

 

[GoSpursGo]

So, I think this thread is similar to the frequently asked question of "quality vs. quantity" when it comes to residency applications. The bottom line is that if you're aiming for a highly competitive specialty, you need both to a certain extent. You need to churn through some relatively straightforward projects to show that you are "productive." But I don't think you can just publish 10 case reports and think you're golden--you need to have 1 or 2 "anchor" publications that are a little more involved and where you played a meaningful role. That doesn't necessarily translate to publication in higher impact journals (though it might, and PDs definitely do know the relative impact factor of journals in their field), but you should have a paper or two where there is a concrete conclusion that you are able to make and where you can point specifically to the work that you contributed.

RE this side question of authorship--I think both @SurfingDoctor and @ChordaEpiphany are correct. I think that most publishing groups still try to rank authorship in order of contribution. At the same time, I think that most people looking at your CV won't be able to tell how important your contribution was unless you are first/second/last. This highlights the importance of being able to speak coherently about the key findings in the paper, the methodology, and what specifically you did.