Trends in Medical Student-Authored Publications, 2012-2022

Purpose

To analyze trends in the quantity and quality of medical student-authored publications from 2012 to 2022.

Methods

We searched PubMed to identify all articles with an author affiliation listed as “medical student” from 2012 to 2022. We manually reviewed articles to determine study design and cross-referenced articles with Semantic Scholar and Scimagojr databases to determine citation count and journal rank data. As a secondary exploratory analysis, we then reviewed the websites for the 100 journals with the most medical student publications during the study period to determine whether they had mandatory fees associated with publishing.

Results

We identified 5,591 articles with medical student authors, of which 5,181 met the inclusion criteria. The number of articles increased by 1,329% from 2012 to 2022. The median Scimago Scientific Journal Ranking of medical student publications increased from 2012 to 2022 (0.470 to 0.630, p=0.0002). The proportion of articles published in a top quartile journal was 29% in 2012 and 41% in 2022 (p=0.09). Twenty-three percent of medical student-authored articles received zero citations. There was a relative increase in medical student-authored perspective articles (from 6% in 2012 to 23% in 2022; p=0.002) and a decrease in case reports (from 26% in 2012 to 14% in 2022; p=0.02). The proportion of papers published in journals with publication fees increased from 3.7% in 2012 to 14.8% in 2022 (p=0.02).

Conclusions

Between 2012 and 2022, the quantity of medical student research on PubMed increased more than tenfold. There was a relative increase in perspective papers and a decrease in case reports. Approximately one in four medical student papers were never cited, and approximately one in six were published in a journal with a publication fee.