Can quality keep up with quantity—Longitudinal trends in research output for the dermatology residency match

Dermatology is one of the most competitive specialties to match into and continually draws high-achieving medical students. According to National Residency Match Program data, applicants reported an increasing number of total research products throughout the past decade. To better contextualize this trajectory, our study investigates the specific types of research items underlying this trend and the impact of applicant-specific and program-specific factors on research output. Names of matched dermatology applicants from 2009, 2011, 2014, 2016, and 2018 were collected and searched on PubMed and Google Scholar to analyze research output. Applicants were further stratified by sex, PhD status, medical school attended, geography of matched program, domestic/international status, and whether they had a home dermatology program. Matched applicants reported a mean of 7.6 research products per applicant in 2018 and, of those products, had a mean of 2.55 peer-reviewed publications per applicant. This discrepancy was observed in other years. Matched applicants from the top 20 schools and applicants from men had a significantly higher mean of peer-reviewed publications. We observed that research volume did not impact an applicant's likelihood of matching to his/her home institution. The upward trend in total research products may be misleading, because applicants increasingly resort to nonindexed research (eg, abstracts, presentations, chapters) to be competitive for dermatology residency. We also observed preliminary evidence of certain applicant-specific factors (eg, attending a top 20 medical school, sex) correlating to increased applicant publications. There is a need for a more stringent and holistic method of evaluating applicant research.