Research but no publications

[JFTSM]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I have tons of research experiences but no publications. How bad is does it look?

 

[michaelrack]

I have tons of research experiences but no publications. How bad is does it look?

Unless you have at least a poster or abstract, it looks slightly less bad than no research at all.

(this answer applies to competitive residencies in general)

 

[JFTSM]

Unless you have at least a poster or abstract, it looks slightly less bad than no research at all.

(this answer applies to competitive residencies in general)

What if I took a year off to do research...

 

[Seldon1985]

Did you take this year off with a research fellowship like Doris Duke, Howard Hughes, CRTP, etc?

 

[JFTSM]

Did you take this year off with a research fellowship like Doris Duke, Howard Hughes, CRTP, etc?

no
😳

 

[clintpark]

What if I took a year off to do research...

If you took a year whole off to do research (assuming you were doing research full-time) and has no publication to show for it, that makes me wonder how productive you would be as a resident doing research on top of your clinical duties.

 

[erectorspinae]

Similar situation, took a job under pretense of research assistant turned out to be abused lab tech. Did prepare me well for 3rd year scut. Did more than enough work to get on pubs (much more than folks I know with names o things) but no ownership/no followup after leaving for med school = no pubs. Look bad?

 

[JLC]

Its already great if you have research experience. I doubt anybody who said you should have a pub after 1 year research have extensive research exp or publishing experience. In undergrad I worked in a lab 20+ hours a week for 2 years and got no papers. I worked in another lab for a few months and got a first and second author. The third lab I worked in for 40+ hours a week for a year and didn't publish. When I took a year off for fulbright I got 2 coauthor and 1 first author. All of them in wetlab basic science research. As you can see, getting pubs is hard to predict and I was fortunate that I was even able to

succeed​

in some of my projects.

Don't worry about pubs, there's a lot of factors involved in publishing besides dedication, ambition...etc. Of course there will be benefits with publishing but if you don't have any then you should focus on your research experience. Many students in med school don't really even care about research and care more about having "papers". Don't let that get to you.

 

[dementia]

If you are doing basic science research in a lab, its difficult to get a paper out of it within a year. Yes research experience by itself is a plus point but productive research is a great plus point. Your research should be accepted by your peers (scientific community). If the research doesn't get published the general impression is that there might be flaws in that study.

 

[neo87]

-