Effect of medical student contributions on academic productivity: Analysis of student authorship over time

Abstract

Introduction: Understanding the trend of student authorship is crucial in determining its correlation to scholarly impact for corresponding authors. Our objective is to investigate student authorship rates over time in articles published in JAMA Internal Medicine (IM), as well as to examine potential effects student authors have on scholarly impact scores of corresponding authors via H-index measures. Methods: Authorship data including student authors (SA), first student authors, and corresponding authors (CA) from prior JAMA IM publications between 2010 and 2018 were collected, with a total of 701 studies. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent sample t-tests were performed to assess for differences in the mean by publishing year and student authorship, respectively. Results: Of 4591 total authors, 683 (14.9%) were considered student authors. The percentage of student authorship increased from 46.3% to 58.0% between 2010 and 2018, respectively. No difference in average H-indices of CA between SA and non-SA groups (overall NSA Hi mean: 30.2, vs SA Hi mean: 32.1, p=0.371) was noted. Discussion: Student participation in research is not a disadvantage to scholarly impact for corresponding authors. Increased student authorship reflects a promising trend towards greater student participation in research within the field of medicine.