Sole publications look bad?

[XannyFairy]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I currently attend low/mid tier MD program (M2). The specialty I am interested in values research and I have been publishing basic science articles on my own for the past year or so starting during M1. I attend a small institution associated with a small hospital, so it is difficult to find doctors to work with here who are in my specialty of interest, nonetheless interested in research, which is why I started submitting articles myself. These are not predatory journals, nor are they open access (I don't even have enough money for this). My articles are entirely bioinformatics-based, therefore no need for wet-lab experiments.

I was speaking to a a respected scientist at a reputable research institution, who said that my sole author publications look bad. The reason was this: If residency directors glanced over my CV, and saw my numerous sole author pubs, they would think these are garbage pubs. They would not have time to google each one and may even put me off as fabricating these pubs. These pubs are very easy to google and have their respective PubMed IDs also.

Therefore my questions are:

1. Do sole author publications look bad?
2. If so, should I not list them when applying to residency?

Any advice is helpful. Thank you

 

[Lawpy]

Sole author papers are very unusual at med student level. Usually they mean something when coming from an established physician and/or scientist

Seeing that they're published in supposedly nonpredatory journals and have pubmed ids, i think they could be ok but obviously that's hard to say without specifics.

I'd try to find a faculty mentor to work with though

 

[SurfingDoctor]

I currently attend low/mid tier MD program (M2). The specialty I am interested in values research and I have been publishing basic science articles on my own for the past year or so starting during M1. I attend a small institution associated with a small hospital, so it is difficult to find doctors to work with here who are in my specialty of interest, nonetheless interested in research, which is why I started submitting articles myself. These are not predatory journals, nor are they open access (I don't even have enough money for this). My articles are entirely bioinformatics-based, therefore no need for wet-lab experiments.

I was speaking to a a respected scientist at a reputable research institution, who said that my sole author publications look bad. The reason was this: If residency directors glanced over my CV, and saw my numerous sole author pubs, they would think these are garbage pubs. They would not have time to google each one and may even put me off as fabricating these pubs. These pubs are very easy to google and have their respective PubMed IDs also.

Therefore my questions are:

1. Do sole author publications look bad?
2. If so, should I not list them when applying to residency?

Any advice is helpful. Thank you

I mean, if you are publishing PubMed indexed articles on your own... I think that looks amazing on an application. But they have to be PubMed indexed and not 1) predatory journals (which you state they aren't), 2) newspaper editorials or 3) blog posts.

 

[operaman]

If that’s the ONLY thing you have it might raise eyebrows. Just add some typical pubs along the way and your solo pubs will actually be a nice bonus.

The biggest thing that research shows programs is that you can get a project from A to Z. There’s little time in residency to teach someone how to do research, so having some first author pubs demonstrates you know how it’s done. Beyond that, it’s a measure of academic productivity and the more academic programs view it as a measure of who’s most likely to do good research in training and possibly even into an academic career.

 

[Doctor-S]

I currently attend low/mid tier MD program (M2). The specialty I am interested in values research and I have been publishing basic science articles on my own for the past year or so starting during M1. I attend a small institution associated with a small hospital, so it is difficult to find doctors to work with here who are in my specialty of interest, nonetheless interested in research, which is why I started submitting articles myself. These are not predatory journals, nor are they open access (I don't even have enough money for this). My articles are entirely bioinformatics-based, therefore no need for wet-lab experiments.

I was speaking to a a respected scientist at a reputable research institution, who said that my sole author publications look bad. The reason was this: If residency directors glanced over my CV, and saw my numerous sole author pubs, they would think these are garbage pubs. They would not have time to google each one and may even put me off as fabricating these pubs. These pubs are very easy to google and have their respective PubMed IDs also.

Therefore my questions are:

1. Do sole author publications look bad?
2. If so, should I not list them when applying to residency?

Any advice is helpful. Thank you

In response to your questions:

1. Do sole author publications look bad?

No ... because the quality of your research is important, and not the number of authors on the article.

2. If so, should I not list them when applying to residency?

Assuming your sole author publications are published in credible peer-reviewed journals, showing up on a responsible search engine (such as PubMed), they should be fine. Feel free to list your publications when applying for residency. You should be prepared to discuss your publications in an intelligent manner. If we're interested in your publications, we may ask you about them - especially if your articles are related to a new or novel scope of medical and/or scientific practice.

Hope this information is useful to you!

 

[GoSpursGo]

Yeah, these look odd, but you still should list them on your CV. Make sure you include PMIDs on your CV and it will immediately become obvious they aren't garbage pubs.

I do agree you should find a mentor and start doing some more "traditional" pubs. Or even keep doing your same bioinformatics thing, and just find a mentor to be the senior author and to review the papers and offer input.

 

[MedicineZ0Z]

No they don't look bad.

 

[ortnakas]

They don’t look bad. However, reviewers may assume they’re from predatory journals since it’s unusual to have med students as a solo author, which means they might not look “as good” as normal publications.

 

[XannyFairy]

If that’s the ONLY thing you have it might raise eyebrows. Just add some typical pubs along the way and your solo pubs will actually be a nice bonus.

The biggest thing that research shows programs is that you can get a project from A to Z. There’s little time in residency to teach someone how to do research, so having some first author pubs demonstrates you know how it’s done. Beyond that, it’s a measure of academic productivity and the more academic programs view it as a measure of who’s most likely to do good research in training and possibly even into an academic career.

Yeah, these look odd, but you still should list them on your CV. Make sure you include PMIDs on your CV and it will immediately become obvious they aren't garbage pubs.

I do agree you should find a mentor and start doing some more "traditional" pubs. Or even keep doing your same bioinformatics thing, and just find a mentor to be the senior author and to review the papers and offer input.

What exactly are typical / traditional pubs? More authors? Clinical?

 

[GoSpursGo]

What exactly are typical / traditional pubs? More authors? Clinical?

Those with an actual senior author.

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

What exactly are typical / traditional pubs? More authors? Clinical?

Typical pubs varies a lot by field, but most medicine pubs seem to take the approach of a team (of varying size, depending on scale of project) overseen by a senior author/PI, with a lot of grunt work being done by students/residents/junior researchers. There are some fields (many humanities fields) where solo author is the norm and team publications are weird. There are also some fields where enormous author teams with hundreds of people are common (I worked with large genomics research consortiums before med school that published these all the time)