Factors Predictive of Publication Among Medical Students Participating in School-Sponsored Research Programs

Publishing research is an important component of medical students' career development and becoming a more competitive residency applicant. Many medical schools offer structured programs to enable students to participate in research during their preclinical and clinical years, but the majority of student-mentor partnerships do not culminate in publication across a variety of institutions and medical specialties. The primary objective of this study is to determine if any factors associated with mentee-mentor partnerships are predictive of publication from two school-sponsored research programs at a single US medical school.

The PubMed-indexed publications of all student-mentor pairings from a summer internship (after year 1 of medical school) or research elective (during year 4 of medical school) at a single institution from 2008 to 2018 were retrospectively reviewed. Student/mentor demographic information was associated with the probability of publication.

A total of 124 students participated in the summer internship with 32 (26%) achieving publication. The publication was significantly more likely for students that were from highly ranked undergraduate institutions (p = 0.04; likelihood ratio (LR) = 5.788), were future Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) members (p = 0.03; LR = 4.597), or worked with a mentor focused on clinical rather than basic science research (p = 0.02; LR = 5.662). Forty-four students participated in the fourth-year elective with 11 (25%) achieving publication. The publication was more likely if the student worked with a mentor without a Doctor of Medicine (MD)/Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree (p = 0.001; LR = 7.051), with a PhD degree (p = 0.002; LR = 7.820), or a mentor with prior publication(s) with prior mentee(s) (p = 0.03; LR = 5.368).

Only one-quarter of mentor-mentee research pairings resulted in publication, with student-related factors more predictive for publication from the internship and mentor-related factors more predictive of publication from the elective. Approaches to promote successful completion of medical student research projects should be considered to yield the greatest value from students' work and strengthen the development of future physician-scientists.