Association between residents' scholarly activities and publication requirement policy

Scholarship is recognized as important in residency training worldwide. The Japan Pediatric Society (JPS) enacted a reform in 2017 to require publication of an article as a prerequisite for taking the board certification test, with the goal of increasing scholarly activity.

The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed description of the trends in residents' scholarly activities related to the JPS reform. A secondary analysis was performed on the cross-sectional database of pediatrics residents who took the certification test in 2015-2018.

The enrolled participants were 2399 residents of which 79.7% passed the test. Publication of any type of article increased significantly (21%-22% to 100%; 0.1 to 0.3/person-year) after the implementation of the JPS reform, whereas academic presentations did not (89% to 91%; 1.2 to 1.3/person-year), both in terms of the percentage of the number of those who created them and the average rate of research production. Not only Japanese articles (11%-13% to 49%-53%; 0.04 to 0.15-0.17/person-year) or case reports (10%-14% to 51%-52%; 0.03-0.05 to 0.16-0.17/person-year), but also English articles (4%-5% to 15%-16%; 0.01-0.02 to 0.05/person-year) and original articles (5% to 11%-17%; 0.01 to 0.03-0.05/person-year) increased significantly. The number of each type of article publication was correlated with success in the board certification test (odds ratio 1.5-1.8).

Scholarly activities of pediatrics residents were enhanced by the JPS implementation of the article requirement policy, which is crucial to fostering a scholarly culture. The most efficient measures to promote scholarship need to be persistently investigated.