Measuring Medical Student Scholarly Activity After a Structured Plastic Surgery Research Fellowship: A Bibliometric...

Plastic surgery is consistently one of the most competitive medical specialties in the National Resident Matching Program match, with students often partaking in dedicated research fellowships to bolster their applications.

The purpose of this study was to quantify the academic productivity of medical students completing a structured plastic surgery research fellowship at a single academic center over a 7-year period.

The bibliometric output of 26 medical student research fellows was analyzed. Eligible scholarly activities for analysis included peer-reviewed articles, books and book chapters, and video editorials published in the field of plastic surgery and indexed between July 1 of the fellowship and September 1, 2023. Cross-verified citation lists were generated for each author and h-index, publication number, number of citing articles, sum of times cited, author position, and journal or book title were recorded.

Twenty-four of 26 research fellows have published a total of 177 scholarly activities (93.22% articles) which have been cited in ∼322 articles. The mean publication per fellow is 6.69 and the mean h-index is 1.46. Analysis excluding the 2022-2023 cohort revealed a strong positive correlation between years since beginning research fellowship and both mean h-index (r = 0.84, P < .001) and mean number of publications per year (r = 0.81, P < .001).

Structured research fellowships can serve as a springboard for medical students to increase research output and engage meaningfully with academia. The authors of this study suggest that publications in peer-reviewed journals continue to increase following participation in a structured plastic surgery research fellowship.