Research Authorship

[mshalom13]

Hi all,
So obviously it's important for medical students to have their names on research publications before applying for residency, and even better if they can be first author on any of them. My question then is as such— I am currently managing a bunch of research projects with other medical students, independent of a lab. I am acting as the primary investigator, and most of my work is conception of the idea, statistics if needed, and collecting the results. I then guide students with less research experience on how to write up the manuscript and collect sources as needed. I am the corresponding author on all projects of this sort, but would multiple first authorships, demonstrating much work on each project, or multiple last authorships, demonstrating leadership and ability to guide, be better on a residency application?
I am curious to hear all opinions, especially if you have any experience in going over residency applications.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi all,
So obviously it's important for medical students to have their names on research publications before applying for residency, and even better if they can be first author on any of them. My question then is as such— I am currently managing a bunch of research projects with other medical students, independent of a lab. I am acting as the primary investigator, and most of my work is conception of the idea, statistics if needed, and collecting the results. I then guide students with less research experience on how to write up the manuscript and collect sources as needed. I am the corresponding author on all projects of this sort, but would multiple first authorships, demonstrating much work on each project, or multiple last authorships, demonstrating leadership and ability to guide, be better on a residency application?
I am curious to hear all opinions, especially if you have any experience in going over residency applications.

Welcome to the forums.

Acting as PI? So you are a medical student in this situation? Are you a faculty member? How are you managing other medical students?

I'll let others comment, but my thoughts: Usually the final, corresponding author is analogous to the executive producer of a movie and has similar responsibilities including securing funding. If you can answer questions on your role in each project that qualifies for authorship for a publication, maybe you're okay? I'm not sure just helping others write their manuscripts warrants authorship.

 

[pazzer2]

Any kind of publication is good for residency apps. I'd honestly be surprised to see a medical student listed as a last author. It would make me wonder how you were able to secure funding, research idea, etc.

It sounds like you're doing research that involves retrospective analyses, so I guess its possible. But any kind of prospective research studies most certainly would involve a faculty member/PI.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

A medical student as a last author on publication would be very eyebrow raising and probably not in a good way, unless its like some editorial fluff piece for some journal about medical students.

 

[mshalom13]

Welcome to the forums.

Acting as PI? So you are a medical student in this situation? Are you a faculty member? How are you managing other medical students?

I'll let others comment, but my thoughts: Usually the final, corresponding author is analogous to the executive producer of a movie and has similar responsibilities including securing funding. If you can answer questions on your role in each project that qualifies for authorship for a publication, maybe you're okay? I'm not sure just helping others write their manuscripts warrants authorship.

I am a medical student and am running a bunch of database retrospective analysis projects. I am the one who came up with the ideas and got the ball rolling on these projects (conceptualization, background research, data collection and analysis) and have other students work on the writing aspect. Ultimately, anyone who contributed sufficiently to the paper is added as an author, the question just is in which order (which is, ultimately, my decision).

 

[operaman]

First author, hands down, especially if you’re doing the bulk of the work. Ideally you’ve discussed this with your colleagues already so nobody is writing up a manuscript expecting first author for it.

Last author is usually a faculty member, so if there’s any faculty helping you then that’s where they go. If there’s no faculty helping, find one. Half the value of research as a Med student is building closer relationships with key faculty.

 

[mshalom13]

A medical student as a last author on publication would be very eyebrow raising and probably not in a good way, unless its like some editorial fluff piece for some journal about medical students.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you think it would look bad to be last author? I understand why first may look better, but I never thought that being last could harm me, especially if I am also corresponding author and can explain my role (i.e. why I deserved to be the last author). I'm asking out of curiosity, don't mean to doubt your opinion.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

If you don't mind me asking, why do you think it would look bad to be last author? I understand why first may look better, but I never thought that being last could harm me, especially if I am also corresponding author and can explain my role (i.e. why I deserved to be the last author). I'm asking out of curiosity, don't mean to doubt your opinion.

Oh, I can think up a whole bunch of reasons. Did you intentionally not seek out a mentor? Are you hard to work with? Do you not know what you don’t know and don’t ask? Are you just doing whatever you can to make yourself seem better, even if the product is nonsense?

I mean, if you make yourself atypical, some people may think only positives as a standout. But just as possible, you open yourself up to scrutiny of how this happened, because it’s very unusual. It depends on the experience of the person and their presumptions in how that that is all intrepretered.

Frankly, if I saw a medical student even submit a primary research article to a peer reviewed journal as a last author, unless they had some pre-med expertise (like a 10 year career data scientist who changed careers and then went to medical school but was a last author on data science because they had a wealth of knowledge and experience), I’d probably think the data was fabricated.

But I again, without context it’s hard to precisely know.

 

[operaman]

Oh, I can think up a whole bunch of reasons. Did you intentionally not seek out a mentor? Are you hard to work with? Do you not know what you don’t know and don’t ask? Are you just doing whatever you can to make yourself seem better, even if the product is nonsense?

I mean, if you make yourself atypical, some people may think only positives as a standout. But just as possible, you open yourself up to scrutiny of how this happened, because it’s very unusual. It depends on the experience of the person and their presumptions in how that that is all intrepretered.

Frankly, if I saw a medical student even submit a primary research article to a peer reviewed journal as a last author, unless they had some pre-med expertise (like a 10 year career data scientist who changed careers and then went to medical school but was a last author on data science because they had a wealth of knowledge and experience), I’d probably think the data was fabricated.

But I again, without context it’s hard to precisely know.

Yeah this pretty much nailed it.

Also keep your goals in mind. No database review is going to dramatically change care. Most of these papers are just CV fodder anyhow. The whole point of Med student research is building connections as much as building your CV. Flying solo with no mentor doesn’t really make much sense at all, plus you’ll have a hard time getting published in any decent journal.

If you’re such a good self starter you should have no trouble finding a mentor. Faculty need pubs for promotion and sometimes even bonuses so they would be happy to have such a motivated student to work with.

 

[pazzer2]

It also begs the question of why you didn't seek any faculty collaborators on your work. Why did you limit everything to med students? There were no faculty members who would have partnered with you on this?

Makes me wonder if you'd do the same after joining a residency program.

 

[Dr G Oogle]

I am a medical student and am running a bunch of database retrospective analysis projects. I am the one who came up with the ideas and got the ball rolling on these projects (conceptualization, background research, data collection and analysis) and have other students work on the writing aspect. Ultimately, anyone who contributed sufficiently to the paper is added as an author, the question just is in which order (which is, ultimately, my decision).

Is there a faculty member involved? If so, then that person would be last, you’d be first and anyone else is in between. If no faculty, then I guess you’d technically qualify for last author, basically if equal “value” on a cv as the first author, but as everyone has said, would be a bit odd to have med student be last unless you have extensive research experience (and the CV to back that up)

 

[GoSpursGo]

These retrospective databases presumably belong to a faculty member. That person needs to be included as an author, and likely needs to be involved during the data collection/analysis/interpretation to ensure your conclusions aren’t crap. Kind of begs the question, does whichever faculty member or department which maintains this database know you’re using it?

Put me in the camp that you shouldn’t be last author. Make the faculty member last, then you can be first or co-first with whichever other student does the bulk of the writing.

 

[mvenus929]

The faculty member is there to ensure that whatever analysis you're doing actually makes sense. You can run a bunch of statistics on a bunch of numbers just fine, but that doesn't mean that that data is actually useful in clinical practice.

For instance, I'm working on developing databases in two of my fields of interest. One of them is a super niche field because these patients are so rare--but because they're so rare, there is a lot of interest in research. I have hormone levels in the majority of those patients. But describing that population with hormone levels doesn't mean anything because they all present to care at different times of life (some in infancy, some in childhood, many around the time of puberty, some later in life), which affect interpretation of those hormone levels.

Another, simpler example is A1c measurements. You can get a database of A1c measurements, but depending on what you're analyzing, you may have to exclude those who aren't going to have a valid A1c (someone on dialysis, perhaps, or those with a thalassemia or acute blood loss). If you as the med student are just looking at what A1c values predict, you may not be aware that different things can affect the lab itself.

So this is me also chiming in saying you need a faculty member overseeing you and seeing a med student (not as a second career) as last author on a bunch of projects would raise flags for me.