Contemporary Trends in Radiation Oncology Resident Research.
To test the hypothesis that recent resident research productivity might be different than a decade ago, and to provide contemporary information about resident scholarly activity.



We compiled a list of radiation oncology residents from the 2 most recent graduating classes (June 2014 and 2015) using the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology annual directories. We queried the PubMed database for each resident's first-authored publications from postgraduate years (PGY) 2 through 5, plus a 3-month period after residency completion. We abstracted corresponding historical data for 2002 to 2007 from the benchmark publication by Morgan and colleagues (Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2009;74:1567-1572). We tested the null hypothesis that these 2 samples had the same distribution for number of publications using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. We explored the association of demographic factors and publication number using multivariable zero-inflated Poisson regression.



There were 334 residents publishing 659 eligible first-author publications during residency (range 0-17; interquartile range 0-3; mean 2.0; median 1). The contemporary and historical distributions were significantly different (P<.001); contemporary publication rates were higher. Publications accrued late in residency (27% in PGY-4, 59% in PGY-5), and most were original research (75%). In the historical cohort, half of all articles were published in 3 journals; in contrast, the top half of contemporary publications were spread over 10 journals-most commonly International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (17%), Practical Radiation Oncology (7%), and Radiation Oncology (4%). Male gender, non-PhD status, and larger residency size were associated with higher number of publications in the multivariable analysis.



We observed an increase in first-author publications during training compared with historical data from the mid-2000s. These contemporary figures may be useful to medical students considering radiation oncology, current residents, training programs, and prospective employers.
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Nebraska.
Vivek
V
Verma
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Lindsay
L
Burt
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Phyllis A
PA
Gimotty
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Electronic address: eric.ojerholm@uphs.upenn.edu.
Eric
E
Ojerholm
D001319:Authorship; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000639:trends*; D004522:Educational Status; D004526:Efficiency; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000639:trends*; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D018787:Radiation Oncology / Q000639:trends*; D012737:Sex Factors