First question, are you asking because:
a) You are interested in research, and would like to see what amount of work you have to put into research to get a publication?
b) You want to do this just to improve your application and you don't have much interest in research.
If you chose (b), then you might want to reconsider. You do things that YOU like not because you think it will help you get into med school or not. For the purposes of this post, research and even having publications are a dime a dozen when looking at the total number of applicants, so you want to have something that sets yourself apart from the next applicant. However, now if a publication in something that sets yourself apart from everyone else who has done research and/or have publications, then that might be something interesting. But yea, don't do something because you think everyone else is doing it. (Unless you like research....then go for it, more power to you) 🙂
To answer your question, at this moment, I am starting my 2nd year of post-bacc. I have a total of 20 publications, and will be submitting my 21st by the end of the year. I started doing research as a junior at UC Davis, and by the end of the year, due to my hardwork, I was rewarded with being the author of 2 book chapters (appendices) in a medical text.
By the time I graduated (3 additional years), I had 10 publications, 2 were the book chapters, 5 were journal articles, and 3 were abstracts. The other 10 publications were during my post-bacc. They were of better quality, since they were for my actual personal research, and were also sent to peer-reviewed journals.
So all in all, i've been able to garner about 20 publications in 4 years. Some were abstracts, most were journal articles, and a 2 were book chapters. For the most part, I was able to maintain myself as first or second author...and this is pretty important since it shows who contributed to the paper the most.
Now for your question about if it is easy to get a publication? For me, I AM VERY LUCKY. I think I thank whatever higher being on a weekly basis that I was lucky enough to find this lab 4+ years ago. It IS definately how much work you put into the lab, and its also depends on the lab. If it is a lab which publishes a lot, then you might be able to find your way into getting publications. If its not then you might be doing labwork with little possibility of a publication. Its HARD work. Very HARD work. My first publication required uncountable rewrites. I still to this day have to work for weeks or months to get things right.
With regards to finding a publication. As the saying goes, good things never come looking for you, you gotta go out and find it. Now back to the whole thing about getting your name on paper. As i said, first author is pretty much the person who wrote the paper, did most of the research (data collecting, reference collecting, etc). The second author is probably almost at the same level as the first author but they did a tad less. The third and fourth authors are pretty much contributors, but did enough to be a co-author. Otherwise you would end up in acknowledgements.
All authorships are possible, even for an undergrad. Out of my 9 journal publications (total pubs was 20), 4 were as first author, and 2 were second author. Although I wrote the whole paper, and conducted the research that went with these papers, my PI put his name first because he is the PI. I personally have nothing against that since the paper would probably get shut out during the peer-reviewed process otherwise. Thats why i said that the 1st and 2nd authorships might be overlapping.
Now, I don't know about your school, but here at UC Davis, they have their own undergraduate science journal, and undergraduate research conferences. YOu can get publications that way too and avoid all the junk from the big journals. In the end, ya know my 20 publications may or may not help me get into med school. I know that, but I enjoy this job, plus it keeps me funded for school.
Hope this lenghty explanation helps. 🙂
