What's with these 4-week research rotations?

[Giovanotto]

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Do you get anything done? Is it worth doing one for someone who has practically zero research experience? What should one expect to get out of it?

 

[fatefeather]

Most of the chart review projects can be done in a week in terms of workload. The tricky thing is:

1. Make sure you are the first author. Last thing you want is you bust your ass off for a third author position. Fact is you can just socialize if you just want to get your name on a paper. I was once offered an authorship if I just proofread her manuscript just because we were gossip buddies. And that was a basic research paper.
2. Will your supervisor keep pushing the paper out? Just because you are a hard-worker doesn't mean your supervisor is.
3. Go to Chinatown and buy a budda charm so your work will not be scooped.

My second chart review paper was accepted in a IF=3 journal without revision 2 months after we submitted it. On the other hand, my first chart review paper, with 2x amount of work, was scooped, held off for half a year, some politics happened, got restarted, then took more than a year to get accepted in a IF=1 journal after two rejections.

So in summary, clinical projects are easier to get a paper out than basic research projects out but you still need luck.

 

[Giovanotto]

Most of the chart review projects can be done in a week in terms of workload. The tricky thing is:

1. Make sure you are the first author. Last thing you want is you bust your ass off for a third author position. Fact is you can just socialize if you just want to get your name on a paper. I was once offered an authorship if I just proofread her manuscript just because we were gossip buddies. And that was a basic research paper.
2. Will your supervisor keep pushing the paper out? Just because you are a hard-worker doesn't mean your supervisor is.
3. Go to Chinatown and buy a budda charm so your work will not be scooped.

My second chart review paper was accepted in a IF=3 journal without revision 2 months after we submitted it. On the other hand, my first chart review paper, with 2x amount of work, was scooped, held off for half a year, some politics happened, got restarted, then took more than a year to get accepted in a IF=1 journal after two rejections.

So in summary, clinical projects are easier to get a paper out than basic research projects out but you still need luck.

Informative but very unsatisfying post, lol. Even more unsure now if I should even do it.

 

[doyouhaveaflag]

Is this a 4th year rotation? We had one of those as an elective at my school. Mostly people used it as an extra interview month and to dick around.

 

[Giovanotto]

Is this a 4th year rotation? We had one of those as an elective at my school. Mostly people used it as an extra interview month and to dick around.

Yup 4th year.

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

yeah, did 2 of these, used it as time for interviews and nothing got done. really depends on what you want out of it and your advisor/mentor though.

if you wanna work, you can put together a decent database in a month

if you just wanna chill and your mentor doesn't care much, its basically a vacation month

 

[operaman]

Functionally it’s a vacation month most of the time. By fourth year I had a number of projects in the works so I used it to nurse some along and did get a couple papers written as well as an IRB and did some data collection. I also used it to get my ERAS in order. But there was also a lot of down time and relaxation compared to clinical rotations.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Use for interviews and to continue past research in between. I did a couple during interview season.