Would second or last author be best for IMG residency applicant to PDs?

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Nilu123

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We're submitting a systematic review about COVID-19 as a letter to the editor to a fairly prestigious journal. The person who did the second most amount of work is an IMG who will be applying to residencies, likely in IM, soon. We are not a lab, and we do not have a PI. We all have different insitutional affilitations. There are 8 authors total. Would it look more impressive to program directors for the IMG to be the second author, or the last author?

If the IMG is last author but the first author is the corresponding author, would that look bad, as in would that imply that the IMG didn't really contribute much?

Unfortunately, I don't think this journal has an option for designating more than one author as lead or corresponding author.

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If the last author is not a PI, then it'll be interpreted as the person that did the least work
 
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If the last author is not a PI, then it'll be interpreted as the person that did the least work

agree.

first did all the work. second maybe even more work, but lower on the totem pole. ... last author either funded the study/pi/did nothing/?

someone correct me if im wrong but i dont think a pd will care about positioning. it’s more important u can explain ure involvement and what the paper is about
 
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We're submitting a systematic review about COVID-19 as a letter to the editor to a fairly prestigious journal. The person who did the second most amount of work is an IMG who will be applying to residencies, likely in IM, soon. We are not a lab, and we do not have a PI. We all have different insitutional affilitations. There are 8 authors total. Would it look more impressive to program directors for the IMG to be the second author, or the last author?

If the IMG is last author but the first author is the corresponding author, would that look bad, as in would that imply that the IMG didn't really contribute much?

Unfortunately, I don't think this journal has an option for designating more than one author as lead or corresponding author.

This can be researcher dependent. Anyone can be the "last" author. But if the IMG is not a senior faculty or with funding, being last author will NOT likely result in any advantage, if not hurting him. If he indeed did a lot of work, you guys can do co-first authors. That's to say, two first authors ("xxx and xxx contribute equally to this article")
 
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This can be researcher dependent. Anyone can be the "last" author. But if the IMG is not a senior faculty or with funding, being last author will NOT likely result in any advantage, if not hurting him. If he indeed did a lot of work, you guys can do co-first authors. That's to say, two first authors ("xxx and xxx contribute equally to this article")

yea no one cares that ****

OP: 2nd author > last author unless it's a PI. First author is best, but any publication is great for residency. Remember, most programs are shifting through >500 applications meaning each application gets about 5 minutes face time max. Numbers > quality unless that quality is literally first author Cell, Nature, Science, NEJM, etc etc. Otherwise, 10 absolute **** pubs will beat out 2 fantastic pubs 99/100.
 
yea no one cares that ****

OP: 2nd author > last author unless it's a PI. First author is best, but any publication is great for residency. Remember, most programs are shifting through >500 applications meaning each application gets about 5 minutes face time max. Numbers > quality unless that quality is literally first author Cell, Nature, Science, NEJM, etc etc. Otherwise, 10 absolute **** pubs will beat out 2 fantastic pubs 99/100.
what about a few first author pubs VS 10 4th/5th author pubs, assuming equal quality pubs?
 
One first author publication is worth much more than 10 5th author publications.
 
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