Publishing by Emergency Medicine Physicians: only for academic advancement?

Abstract

Background: For academic promotion, publishing in an international medical journal is mandatory. Publication of reviews, clinical, or experimental studies should ideally continue throughout the academic lifetime of one who reaches Associate Professor status, as evidence of continuing personal development. The purpose of this study was to compare the publication practices of emergency medicine academicians before and after they reached the rank of associate professor (AP).
Methods: In the fall of 2011, the identities of APs of emergency medicine in Turkey were found from hospital web pages and personal interviews. International publications authored by APs were found using the Pubmed search engine and classified as research articles (first author), research articles (not first author), other articles (first author), other articles (not first author), and letters to the editor. Publications were also tagged as being published before or after the physician’s attainment of AP rank.
Results: Thirty APs of emergency medicine were identified. Before AP status was obtained, the mean publication rate (as first author, of any type of publication) was 0.55±0.43 per year. This fell to 0.30±0.51 (p=0.02) in the period after the physician became an AP. The rates of publication in the following categories fell in the post-AP period, although not to a statistically significant extent: research articles (first author, 0.35 vs. 0.26), total publications (1.74 vs. 1.63), and total research articles (1.30 vs 1.05).
Conclusion: For all but one associate professor of emergency medicine in Turkey, the rate of publication in international journals fell after they were awarded AP status.