Does undergraduate publications matter?

[ahk7]

Hello everyone, so in undergrad I was able to get 7-8 publications (as contributing author rather than first author) in neurology/epilepsy. I was wondering if currently I am interested in ortho and neurology, should I do research in ortho during medical school and if I decide to go with the neuro surgery path I can just use my undergrad pubs?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

All publications matter... as long as they are in a PubMed indexed journal and not some predatory journal you (or someone else) paid money to just published in the Journal of Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell Biology.

If you want to try to do research in your future area of interest and you get a publication, all the better.

 

[Welshman]

The CV never dies, just gets longer. In my experience, to an extent, weight matters more than quality. People looking at your CV may read the first few lines of a subheading before their eyes glaze over and they skim the rest. It takes a good bit of concentration to pick out details from a page+ of citations. Try reading a bibliography, at some point you just say, they probably know what they're talking about and move on.

 

[Lawpy]

Hello everyone, so in undergrad I was able to get 7-8 publications (as contributing author rather than first author) in neurology/epilepsy. I was wondering if currently I am interested in ortho and neurology, should I do research in ortho during medical school and if I decide to go with the neuro surgery path I can just use my undergrad pubs?

List everything. Publications are a permanent part of your CV that stays with you forever

 

[mesopic]

You can and should definitely list your undergrad pubs in your residency application, but in order to be competitive for neurosurgery at least you will still need to do research in med school ideally with your home neurosurgery department. Perhaps look into spine surgery research if you are interested in both ortho and neurosurgery?

 

[DameJulie]

Yes they do!! Like above said, pubs are forever! Also if you have a previous master's or PhD with pubs that also counts.

 

[Redpancreas]

Hello everyone, so in undergrad I was able to get 7-8 publications (as contributing author rather than first author) in neurology/epilepsy. I was wondering if currently I am interested in ortho and neurology, should I do research in ortho during medical school and if I decide to go with the neuro surgery path I can just use my undergrad pubs?

They will help if you pursue neurology. For neurology fit and scores will be more important, but keep in mind neurology isn’t a field that really looks for pubs to begin with. For neurosurgery, I think the publications will have be a pretty small positive contribution mainly by increasing your total publication count which some places may keep track of, but you will need to do specific neurosurgery research and if you apply with only that research, I don’t think NSG places will think you’re interested and I don’t think you’ll match. Also, Ortho won’t care much IMO. You'd need to do Ortho research.

 

[mrbreakfast]

Unless your research was in epilepsy surgery, your prior research will count very little for neurosurgery and even less for ortho. Any research is good to have, and this will pad your CV, but I wouldn't expect this to move the scales much. If you are planning on doing a surgical subspecialty, you need research in that subspecialty.

If you decide to do neurology, you are probably fine with this, but can always do more. It's more by nature of the applicants than program requirements, but applicants to higher-tier neuro programs will often have lengthy research CVs and/or PhDs.

 

[futureapppsy2]

All publications matter... as long as they are in a PubMed indexed journal and not some predatory journal you (or someone else) paid money to just published in the Journal of Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell Biology.

If you want to try to do research in your future area of interest and you get a publication, all the better.

To be fair, CHO cell cultures are great for 5HT1a research... (but yes, I agree).

 

[SurfingDoctor]

To be fair, CHO cell cultures are great for 5HT1a research... (but yes, I agree).

Yeah, that was a joke... just a nerdy one.

 

[aldol16]

All publications stay on your CV forever. Eventually you might get to the point where you only include selected publications that are high impact and highly cited but you're not at that stage in your career yet. Everything is included. But you still need to demonstrate continued interest in research. It's not like you can just ride on your undergrad papers forever. You'll have to have med school research too - otherwise it just looks like you lost interest.

 

[Lawpy]

All publications stay on your CV forever. Eventually you might get to the point where you only include selected publications that are high impact and highly cited but you're not at that stage in your career yet. Everything is included. But you still need to demonstrate continued interest in research. It's not like you can just ride on your undergrad papers forever. You'll have to have med school research too - otherwise it just looks like you lost interest.

I haven't seen anyone listing only selected papers, even at internationally renowned, leading multicenter trials level. Everyone listed all papers they published.

 

[aldol16]

I haven't seen anyone listing only selected papers, even at internationally renowned, leading multicenter trials level. Everyone listed all papers they published.

You haven't seen anybody list only selected papers they have published? Literally here is a publicly available example: https://chemistry.harvard.edu/files/chemistry/files/cv_-_vollmer-snarr_2020.pdf

There's no reason to list all the low impact papers you've published in no name journals after a certain stage in your career. It looks better when people don't have to go digging through 10 pages of papers to find the good ones, i.e., the NEJM JAMA or BMJ papers you've published.

 

[Lawpy]

You haven't seen anybody list only selected papers they have published? Literally here is a publicly available example: https://chemistry.harvard.edu/files/chemistry/files/cv_-_vollmer-snarr_2020.pdf

There's no reason to list all the low impact papers you've published in no name journals after a certain stage in your career. It looks better when people don't have to go digging through 10 pages of papers to find the good ones, i.e., the NEJM JAMA or BMJ papers you've published.

This is a good point

 

[DameJulie]

This is a good point

It’s kind of like artists with their “best hit” songs in a single album 😛 hope we will all get there some day

 

[Goro]

Hello everyone, so in undergrad I was able to get 7-8 publications (as contributing author rather than first author) in neurology/epilepsy. I was wondering if currently I am interested in ortho and neurology, should I do research in ortho during medical school and if I decide to go with the neuro surgery path I can just use my undergrad pubs?

Better than nothing