Impact of mentoring medical students on scholarly productivity

Our objectives were to evaluate collaboration with medical students and other nondoctoral authors, and assess whether mentoring such students influences the academic productivity of senior authors.

Six issues of the Laryngoscope and International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology (IFAR) were examined for the corresponding author of each manuscript, and whether any students were involved in authorship. The h-index of all corresponding authors was calculated using the Scopus database to compare the scholarly impact of authors collaborating with students and those collaborating exclusively with other physicians or doctoral-level researchers.

Of 261 Laryngoscope manuscripts, 71.6% had exclusively physician or doctoral-level authors, 9.2% had "students" (nondoctoral-level authors) as first authors, and another 19.2% involved "student" authors. Corresponding values for IFAR manuscripts were 57.1%, 6.3%, and 36.5%. Corresponding authors who collaborated with students had higher scholarly impact, as measured by the h-index, than those collaborating exclusively with physicians and doctoral-level scientists in both journals.

Collaboration with individuals who do not have doctoral-level degrees, presumably medical students, has a strong association with scholarly impact among researchers publishing in the Laryngoscope and IFAR. Research mentorship of medical students interested in otolaryngology may allow a physician-scientist to evaluate the students' effectiveness and functioning in a team setting, a critical component of success in residency training, and may have beneficial effects on research productivity for the senior author.