Do Adcoms read applicants' papers?

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Endoxifen

Endoxifen

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7+ Year Member
I'm submitting two first papers for publication in the next couple weeks. This got me thinking, do adcom members actually read the papers the students publish? I know this is a fairly rare occurrence, but considering the sheer volume of applicants, I suspect that there are a fair number of papers for adcom members to read. Thanks for the help!
 
If you list anything that you say you have your name on, that is published, I will look to see if it's in Pubmed.

God help you if it's not.

I don't read your papers. I have enough stuff in in my own field I need to read.
Endoxifen said:
I'm submitting two first papers for publication in the next couple weeks. This got me thinking, do adcom members actually read the papers the students publish? I know this is a fairly rare occurrence, but considering the sheer volume of applicants, I suspect that there are a fair number of papers for adcom members to read. Thanks for the help!
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Goro said:
If you list anything that you say you have your name on, that is published, I will look to see if it's in Pubmed.

God help you if it's not.

I don't read your papers. I have enough stuff in in my own field I need to read.
Click to expand...
That's a bit terrifying. What if it doesn't appear because it's newly published? There have been times where I've looked for papers on Pubmed and I couldn't find them.
 
Goro said:
If you list anything that you say you have your name on, that is published, I will look to see if it's in Pubmed.

God help you if it's not.

I don't read your papers. I have enough stuff in in my own field I need to read.
Click to expand...
What do you do when you get an update letter about a paper accepted and listed as "In Press" ?
 
efle said:
What do you do when you get an update letter about a paper accepted and listed as "In Press" ?
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Most journals have "in press" versions of articles that can be accessed from the journal webpage. They generally are just the article with different formatting, typically single column double spaced, more resembling an essay for a class. I never had to send an update letter, but if I knew I was in this situation (i.e., the article hasn't been archived in databases yet), then I would include a URL or indicate how to access the article.
 
sat0ri said:
Most journals have "in press" versions of articles that can be accessed from the journal webpage. They generally are just the article with different formatting, typically single column double spaced, more resembling an essay for a class. I never had to send an update letter, but if I knew I was in this situation (i.e., the article hasn't been archived in databases yet), then I would include a URL or indicate how to access the article.
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Huh in my case it wasn't online in any format until a few weeks after acceptance to the journal. In hindsight I guess I could have included a dropbox link to a pdf or something? That seems a little sketchy though
 
Endoxifen said:
I'm submitting two first papers for publication in the next couple weeks. This got me thinking, do adcom members actually read the papers the students publish? I know this is a fairly rare occurrence, but considering the sheer volume of applicants, I suspect that there are a fair number of papers for adcom members to read. Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

It really depends. For MD-PhD interviews, faculty who interview you do take the time to carefully read your research statement, publication record and mentor letter of recommendation. It is important for he/she to actually get a sense for what you did - more so than just count the # of papers you have.
 
Shaq said:
It really depends. For MD-PhD interviews, faculty who interview you do take the time to carefully read your research statement, publication record and mentor letter of recommendation. It is important for he/she to actually get a sense for what you did - more so than just count the # of papers you have.
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Out of curiosity, do you know of any MD/PhD with a biostat or bioinformatics PhD component?
 
Shaq said:
There might be many such people - but I haven't met any personally.
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Oh ok, thanks anyway. I love research, but I really don't like bench research. A biostat/bioinformatics MD/PhD would be perfect for me. I'll be sure to keep my eye out. Thank you for help.
 
Endoxifen said:
Oh ok, thanks anyway. I love research, but I really don't like bench research. A biostat/bioinformatics MD/PhD would be perfect for me. I'll be sure to keep my eye out. Thank you for help.
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I didn't apply MSTP, but I believe most places you put down your areas of interest and they try to get you in touch with the right people for it when you come to interview?
 
efle said:
I didn't apply MSTP, but I believe most places you put down your areas of interest and they try to get you in touch with the right people for it when you come to interview?
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I imagine it cuts down on your prospects if you exclusively apply for something so niche though. IDK, maybe applying to a few of these programs would be the best idea.
 
Endoxifen said:
I imagine it cuts down on your prospects if you exclusively apply for something so niche though. IDK, maybe applying to a few of these programs would be the best idea.
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Might depend where you're applying to. A lot of MSTPs are at places so giant and so research heavy in many areas that I can't imagine they lack what you're after
 
Goro said:
If you list anything that you say you have your name on, that is published, I will look to see if it's in Pubmed.

God help you if it's not.

I don't read your papers. I have enough stuff in in my own field I need to read.
Click to expand...

Just for the record, lots of social science journals aren't pubmed indexed

(Been in med school nearly 3 yrs, but clearly the admissions process took its toll and this is coming from a place of me being still nervous about somebody relooking at my app and deciding I don't belong 🙂)

To answer OP question - I personally as a student interviewer look up a students' papers to discuss with the applicants (interviewing for a research-intensive program so everybody is selling themselves as a future researcher). For me less about the quality of the paper and more about just making sure what is listed on an application matches the real deal.
 
@Goro I hope that " God help you if it's not" line was a joke b/c a classmate did a Pub and it wasn't on PubMD until like a month later. Would she be permanently labelled a liar?
It's not all inclusive.
 
Endoxifen said:
Out of curiosity, do you know of any MD/PhD with a biostat or bioinformatics PhD component?
Click to expand...

Endoxifen said:
Oh ok, thanks anyway. I love research, but I really don't like bench research. A biostat/bioinformatics MD/PhD would be perfect for me. I'll be sure to keep my eye out. Thank you for help.
Click to expand...

I only know one personally. Doing computational research can be quite valuable especially if the PI is really into big data. Most of the people that I know that have computational components to their projects are in BME, Biophysics, genetics/genomics, or like me just using bioinformatics/modeling for a component of a project (have an engineering background so it helped).
 
eteshoe said:
I only know one personally. Doing computational research can be quite valuable especially if the PI is really into big data. Most of the people that I know that have computational components to their projects are in BME, Biophysics, genetics/genomics, or like me just using bioinformatics/modeling for a component of a project (have an engineering background so it helped).
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It sounds really cool. I've never actually done bioinformatics. I only hit the edges of it while I worked in labs the first two years of college. I do know a lot about gene expression and statistics though, so I should be able to get along fairly well after a steep learning curve for the coding.
 
Endoxifen said:
Out of curiosity, do you know of any MD/PhD with a biostat or bioinformatics PhD component?
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I met a handful on the interview trail and they seemed very much in high demand. If you're interested, just make sure to look for places with faculty/research departments in bioinformatics/genomics or physical biology/modeling etc. because they're fairly common but not universal.
 
This has been answered above, but journals also sometimes will have some blurb on their websites about upcoming papers, even if only the title and author list.

If I suspect someone is lying, I will either ask them politely about the paper at interview, or ask the wily old Admissions dean to ask for me.

I have seen examples of dishonesty, an AACOMAS was notified. AMCAS has a similar reporting system in place for MD schools. In essence, people get blacklisted.

Endoxifen said:
That's a bit terrifying. What if it doesn't appear because it's newly published? There have been times where I've looked for papers on Pubmed and I couldn't find them.
Click to expand...

mwsapphire said:
@Goro I hope that " God help you if it's not" line was a joke b/c a classmate did a Pub and it wasn't on PubMD until like a month later. Would she be permanently labelled a liar?
It's not all inclusive.
Click to expand...
 
Goro said:
This has been answered above, but journals also sometimes will have some blurb on their websites about upcoming papers, even if only the title and author list.

If I suspect someone is lying, I will either ask them politely about the paper at interview, or ask the wily old Admissions dean to ask for me.

I have seen examples of dishonesty, an AACOMAS was notified. AMCAS has a similar reporting system in place for MD schools. In essence, people get blacklisted.
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So basically, if there's a good explanation and the applicant doesn't appear to be lying, it's cool.
 
Goro said:
This has been answered above, but journals also sometimes will have some blurb on their websites about upcoming papers, even if only the title and author list.

If I suspect someone is lying, I will either ask them politely about the paper at interview, or ask the wily old Admissions dean to ask for me.

I have seen examples of dishonesty, an AACOMAS was notified. AMCAS has a similar reporting system in place for MD schools. In essence, people get blacklisted.
Click to expand...
As scary as that is, I'm honestly glad that something like that exists. Considering that papers are the fundamental currency of science, there are few bigger claims then "I published X number of papers".
 
We try to find evidence of it. That what our librarian colleagues are for.

Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Slight derail. What if an applicant has research in a field other than science, but in a peer-reviewed journal (obviously not on PubMed)? Should a URL or something be provided, or is the citation enough if you can google it and find it?
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Goro said:
We try to find evidence of it. That what our librarian colleagues are for.
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So just leave it with the cite then. I was just thinking of ways to make it easier on adcoms. If you can type in a link and go right to the pub, that might save you a few minutes. I just Googled mine and it was right there though, so that's why I wasn't sure.
 
Goro said:
This has been answered above, but journals also sometimes will have some blurb on their websites about upcoming papers, even if only the title and author list.

If I suspect someone is lying, I will either ask them politely about the paper at interview, or ask the wily old Admissions dean to ask for me.

I have seen examples of dishonesty, an AACOMAS was notified. AMCAS has a similar reporting system in place for MD schools. In essence, people get blacklisted.
Click to expand...

Somewhat related question: I wrote a chapter for my research professors upcoming textbook and am listed as an author at the start of the chapter along with my picture. However, on the publisher's website it will just list my research professor as the author of the whole book. My research professor said he would talk about it in my LOR so can I list it as a publication even if my name won't appear anywhere online?
 
Having it in the LOR will be Ok

kuzy said:
Somewhat related question: I wrote a chapter for my research professors upcoming textbook and am listed as an author at the start of the chapter along with my picture. However, on the publisher's website it will just list my research professor as the author of the whole book. My research professor said he would talk about it in my LOR so can I list it as a publication even if my name won't appear anywhere online?
Click to expand...
 
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