Publishing by Emergency Medicine Physicians: Only for Academic Advancement?

Objectives: Publishing in an international medical journal is mandatory for academic promotion. Publication of reviews, clinical studies, or experimental studies should ideally continue throughout the academic careers of Associate Professors (AP), 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 AP. Methods: The identities of APs of emergency medicine in Turkey were determined from hospital web pages and personal interviews in the fall of 2011. International publications authored by APs were identified 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 published before or after the physician’s attainment of the AP title. 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. The rate decreased to 0.30±0.51 (p=0.02) in the period after AP status was obtained. The rates of publication in the following categories decreased 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). Conclusions: For all but one AP of emergency medicine in Turkey, the rate of publication in international journals decreased after AP status was awarded.