Scientific activity by medical students: the relationship between academic publishing during medical school and publication careers after graduation

Abstract

Introduction: Engagement of clinicians in research is important for the integration of science and clinical practice. However, at this moment, there is a shortage of clinician-scientists. Success experiences can stimulate student interest in a research career. Conducting actual research leading to publication is a potential method to gain success experience. This study assessed whether publication as a medical student is associated with publication after graduation. We determined whether medical students in the Netherlands who are involved in research, as measured by publication in international journals before graduation: 1) are more likely to publish, 2) publish a greater number of papers, and 3) have higher citation impact scores after graduation.

Methods: We matched 2005-2008 MD graduates (with rare names, n = 4145 in total) from all eight Dutch university medical centres to their publications indexed in the Web of Science and published between 6 years before and 6 years after graduation. For sensitivity analysis we performed both automatic assignment on the whole group and manual assignment on a 10% random sample.

Results: Students who had published before graduation: 1) were 1.9 times as likely to publish, 2) published more papers, and 3) had a slightly higher citation impact after graduation.

Discussion: Medical students who conducted research leading to a publication before graduation were more likely to be scientifically active after graduation. While this is not a causal relationship per se, these results cautiously suggest that successful early involvement in research could influence the long-term scientific activity of clinicians.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Clinician-scientists; Medical students; Research in medical education.

Fig. 1

Histogram of number of publications published in 6 years after graduation by pre-graduation publication (by students with rare names). The striped line represents the mean number of publications in the 6 years after graduation for each group. Before graduation: between 6 years before or in the year of graduation