bims-evares 2026-07-26 papers

bims-evares

Biomed News

on Evaluation of research

Issue of 2026–07–26
fourteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society

Comprehensive Analysis of the Global Standing of Universities, Research Performance, and the Impact of Scholarly Journals: Pakistan's Academic and Research Landscape 2026.
On-farm conservation: Status, overview of publications, and contributions to agrobiodiversity conservation.
Impact factor enshittification: Reflections on metrics, incentives and scientific publishing.
Open Access, Keyword Quantity and Quality Are Associated With Citation Impact in Orthopaedic Research.
Residency Research Quality Outweighs Quantity in Predicting Sports Medicine Fellowship Placement.
Handle on QoL corpus - a portrait of a maturing discipline.
Beyond citation-based metrics: Measuring interdisciplinarity via SBERT semantic embeddings and its heterogeneous effects on citation impact.
Comparative Bibliometric Analysis of Herbal Medicine Research in Chinese and Iranian Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Clinical Trials : Short title: Iranian and Chinese CAM Trials.
Gender pay gaps in the social sciences.
Reasons for Retraction of Biomedical Articles Written by Eastern Mediterranean and Turkish Authors; A Comprehensive Cross-Sectional Study During 2010-2019 : Short title: Reasons for Retraction of Biomedical Articles.
Could small-team science be dying out?
Citation self-awareness for a fairer academic publishing landscape.
Paper mills in evidence synthesis: reported involvement among retracted systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
The Rise of Productivity Culture: Assessing Trends in Scholarly Output Among Medical Students Applying to General Surgery.

Pak J Med Sci. 2026 Jul;42(7): 1641-1647

Comprehensive Analysis of the Global Standing of Universities, Research Performance, and the Impact of Scholarly Journals: Pakistan's Academic and Research Landscape 2026.

Sultan Ayoub Meo, Awaiza Khan, Shaukat Ali Jawaid.

  Academic institutes and innovative research play a pivotal role in knowledge, skills, professionalism, health, economic progress, and the sustainable development of nations. On June 17, 2026, QS World University Rankings released the ranking of global universities. Pakistan has 278 universities, 163 in the public sector and 115 in the private sector. Among these universities, only 02 were ranked in the top 500: Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, ranked 381st, and the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), Islamabad, 384th. On the same date, June 17, 2026, Web of Science, Clarivate, released the Journal Citation Report (JCR) of scholarly journals. Worldwide, Clarivate has indexed 22,643 journals from 113 countries. In Pakistan, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has 723 journals; however, only 34 are indexed in Web of Science: 10 in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and 24 in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). Pakistan Veterinary Journal achieved an impact factor (IF) of 6.1 and a first-quartile ranking, while Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences (PJMS) achieved an IF of 1.6 and a second-quartile ranking. In the medical sciences, the highest H-index was achieved by the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences (51) and the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association (44). Pakistan needs to increase educational budget for universities to improve the quality education, research culture and support academic journals in publishing innovative, knowledge-sharing content.

Keywords:  Citations; Hirsch Index; Impact Factor; Journals; Pakistan; Research; Universities

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.42.7.20163
An Acad Bras Cienc. 2026 ;pii: S0001-37652026000204206. [Epub ahead of print]98(2): e20241344

On-farm conservation: Status, overview of publications, and contributions to agrobiodiversity conservation.

Ariadne Watywarawan, Camila N Machado, Lays Juliani Hespanhol, Birgit Harter-Marques, Jairo José Zocche.

This study aimed to present the status of on-farm conservation, considering its relevance for the preservation of agrobiodiversity on a global scale and its impacts in Brazil. Through bibliometric analyses, the most frequent institutions, countries, and researchers publishing on the topic were identified, and the main topics studied in each four-year publication period were discussed, covering the period from 1996 to 2023. A timeline of significant events in the establishment and legal recognition of landrace conservation was created. Since 1996, 315 original and 15 review articles have been indexed. Italy, Brazil, and the USA lead in publication numbers, with Italy standing out due to its focus on Fabaceae varieties and high researcher output. Brazil, like the USA and Italy, also has a significant support from global funding agencies for on-farm conservation research. The four-year analysis revealed the decentralization of research from Europe to the Global South and the improvements in research over time. The bibliometric review and organization of a timeline demonstrated that the development of incentive programs for the conservation of landrace varieties, coupled with support for scientific research, enhances the value of plant genetic resources and contributes to food security, sustainable agriculture, and genetic conservation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202620241344
Ann Hepatol. 2026 Jul 22. pii: S1665-2681(26)00080-3. [Epub ahead of print] 102260

Impact factor enshittification: Reflections on metrics, incentives and scientific publishing.

Norberto C Chávez-Tapia, Agustín Albillos Martínez, Stephen L Chan, Federico Piñero, Ana Maria Rivas-Estilla, Mário Reis Álvares-da-Silva, Claudio Tiribelli, Misael Uribe, Marco Arrese, Jordi Gracia-Sancho.



Keywords:  artificial intelligence; bibliometric analysis; citation

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aohep.2026.102260
Orthop Traumatol Surg Res. 2026 Jul 21. pii: S1877-0568(26)00220-3. [Epub ahead of print] 104799

Open Access, Keyword Quantity and Quality Are Associated With Citation Impact in Orthopaedic Research.

Lou Davaine, Romane Cousin, Marc Antoine Rousseau, Baptiste Boukebous.

   BACKGROUND: Citation counts are widely used as indicators of scientific visibility and academic impact. We hypothesized that open access (OA) status, the number of author-defined keywords, and keyword quality would be associated with higher citation rates. Few data is available regarding this issue, therefore we did a retrospective investigation aiming to: 1) Evaluate the impact of OA on citation counts of articles published in Orthopaedics & Traumatology: Surgery & Research (OTSR), 2) Evaluate the impact author-defined keyword characteristics (number and quality) on citation counts.
HYPOTHESIS: We hypothesised that these parameters would be associated with higher citation rates.
MATERIAL & METHODS: This retrospective bibliometric study included all PubMed-indexed articles published in Orthopaedics & Traumatology: Surgery & Research between 2016 and 2026 (n = 2,760 articles). Publication year, article type, OA status, and author-defined keywords were extracted. Citation outcomes were obtained from OpenAlex and Crossref. The primary outcome was OpenAlex citations counted from the publication year through the two following calendar years. Keyword assessment included keyword number, a frequentist score based on top n-grams from comparable PubMed articles, and a clinical relevance score based on a semi-automated orthopaedic lexicon.
RESULTS: Median two-year OpenAlex citations were 3.0 (Q1-Q3:1.0-7.0). In the 2016-2024 analysis, OA was associated with higher two-year citation counts in both univariable (β = 1.29,95%CI[0.67-1.90] (p < 0.0001)) and multivariable analyses(β = 0.93,95%CI[0.34-1.50] (p = 0.002)). In the multivariable model, the number of author keywords (β = 0.22,95%CI[0.03-0.40] (p = 0.024)) and keyword top n-gram matches (β = 0.09,95%CI[0.07-0.11] (p < 0.001)) were independently associated with higher citation counts. The clinical keyword relevance score showed a positive trend that did not reach statistical significance (β = 1.50,95%CI[-I[-0.04-3] (p = 0.056)). Yet, the clinical keyword relevance score was significantly associated with higher citation counts in univariable analysis (β = 0.13,95%CI[0.09-0.17] (p < 0.0001)).
CONCLUSION: OA status and keyword quality were associated with higher citation rates after accounting for citation maturation. Article accessibility and keyword discoverability may represent modifiable levers to improve orthopaedic research visibility.
LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: IV; retrospective observational study.

Keywords:  Author-defined keyword quality (keyword number/clinical relevance/non-redundant terms); Citation source variability (OpenAlex/CrossRef/Web of Science/Google Scholar); Frequentist keyword assessment (PubMed comparable articles/top n-grams/title-abstract enrichment); OTSR bibliometrics (article type/Impact Factor/SIGAPS/article visibility); Open access citation advantage (OA status/citation maturation/two-year citation window); Orthopaedic keyword discoverability (MeSH limitations/specialty-specific terminology/search engine indexing)

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.otsr.2026.104799
Arthrosc Sports Med Rehabil. 2026 May 05. e70027

Residency Research Quality Outweighs Quantity in Predicting Sports Medicine Fellowship Placement.

Carolina Gomez, Olivia Goldenberg, Sarah Haugh, Shreya M Saraf, Mary K Mulcahey.

Purpose: To determine whether academic productivity during residency correlates with the type of orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship program attended.
Methods: All orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education were identified by cross-referencing databases from the Arthroscopy Association of North America and the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. An initial database search was conducted in September of 2024. Fellow and faculty names were collected from program websites or requested via email. Programs that did not list fellow or faculty names and did not provide them upon request were excluded. The research team followed up on the request for information if response was not received after 2 weeks. All programs that were listed in all 3 of the referenced databases and had fellow/faculty information publicly available or provided upon request were included in the study. Publication data were obtained using Scopus. Fellow academic productivity was assessed by H-index and number of publications during residency. Faculty H-index scores were averaged to represent each program's academic productivity.
Results: Fifty-seven programs met inclusion criteria. Programs were categorized as high or low academic productivity based on the median average faculty H-index, and the threshold was determined to be 16.5. High-academic-productivity programs (n = 29) had a median faculty H-index of 23.30 (mean: 27.46 ± 9.6), compared with 11.00 (mean: 10.89 ± 3.23) in low-productivity programs (n = 28). A statistically significant but weak correlation was found between faculty H-index and fellow H-index (P = .045; Spearman's rho = 0.266). A weaker, nonsignificant correlation was observed between faculty H-index and fellow publication count during residency (P = .075; Spearman's rho = 0.237). Subgroup analysis showed no significant differences in fellow H-index or residency publication count between high- and low-productivity programs (P = .060 and P = .090, respectively).
Conclusions: Fellows in more academically productive fellowship programs show slightly higher H-indices overall, yet the correlation is weak and productivity alone does not predict the type of fellowship program attended.
Clinical Relevance: These findings offer insight into how research productivity during residency may play a role in determining the level of academic productivity of sports medicine fellowship programs and where residents match.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ars2.70027
Br J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 2026 Jun 12. pii: S0266-4356(26)00144-0. [Epub ahead of print]

Handle on QoL corpus - a portrait of a maturing discipline.

A Kanatas, E Gilmartin, S N Rogers.

  'Handle on QoL' is a unique, online, searchable database of all peer-reviewed papers, published since 1982, regarding health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in head and neck cancer. The aim of this paper is to benchmark our results on the Handle on QoL dataset, against four common bibliometric patterns - author productivity, journal concentration, team size, and the sequencing of growth and diffusion. In this paper, we performed a bibliometric analysis of the database to explore its contents and understand the development of research on HRQoL in head and neck cancer. Publication numbers were small in the 80s and 90s (<20 per year) showing a slow increase from the early 90s, before increasing rapidly from the early 2000s to the late 2010s. The number of authors per paper varied overall between one and 81, with a mean of 7.09 and median of six authors per paper. The top 10 journals, by volume of publications, accounted for 33.5% of all publications in the collected data. Integrating bibliometrics into the characterisation of Handle on QoL data transforms subjective patient reporting into objective and measurable insights. Researchers/clinicians may therefore define the field's scope, monitor real-time trends, and pinpoint critical gaps in knowledge.

Keywords:  Bibliometrics; Handle-on-Qol; Head and neck cancer; Health related quality of life

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjoms.2026.06.002
PLoS One. 2026 ;21(7): e0354129

Beyond citation-based metrics: Measuring interdisciplinarity via SBERT semantic embeddings and its heterogeneous effects on citation impact.

Lu Liu, Yu Rong.

BACKGROUND: Interdisciplinary research is a cornerstone of global science policy, yet decades of research have reached conflicting conclusions about its association with citation impact. This inconsistency stems primarily from traditional indicators, which rely on reference diversity rather than genuine semantic knowledge integration, and from small, discipline-specific samples that limit generalizability.
OBJECTIVE: This study introduces a novel semantic interdisciplinarity measure based on Sentence-BERT (SBERT) embeddings, which directly captures cross-disciplinary knowledge integration at the textual level, and tests its heterogeneous relationship with citation impact across the full spectrum of scientific disciplines.
METHODS: We analyzed 121,194 articles published 2015-2025 across all 19 root-level disciplines in OpenAlex. We validated the reliability of OpenAlex disciplinary classification using multi-dimensional semantic analyses, and compared our SBERT-based indicator with the Simpson Diversity Index and Rao-Stirling Index. We employed OLS and negative binomial regressions with discipline and year fixed effects (standard errors clustered at the discipline level), journal tier heterogeneity analysis, and domain-specific decomposition analyses.
RESULTS: The semantic interdisciplinarity indicator shows moderate convergent validity with conventional citation-based metrics (r = 0.333-0.347, p < 0.001) and provides a small but meaningful increase in explanatory power beyond traditional indicators (Δ adjusted R² = 0.003), although its coefficient is marginally significant and negative (β = -1.5565, p = 0.085). Overall, semantic interdisciplinarity is positively associated with citation impact in baseline models, but this effect is primarily driven by cross-domain integration between epistemically distant domains, particularly in the natural sciences. The positive effect is consistent across all journal influence tiers, with the strongest effect observed in mid-tier journals, and presents stark heterogeneity across individual disciplines.
CONCLUSION: Boundary-spanning research bridging epistemically distant domains appears to deliver consistent citation rewards. Our findings address long-standing inconsistencies in the literature, and provide actionable insights for research evaluation and science policy.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0354129
Galen Med J. 2026 ;15 e3573

Comparative Bibliometric Analysis of Herbal Medicine Research in Chinese and Iranian Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Clinical Trials : Short title: Iranian and Chinese CAM Trials.

Shahram Shafa, Tayyebeh Zarei, Majid Vatankhah, Fatemeh Rahmanian, Ehsan Rahmanian, Sara Rahmanian, Mansour Deylami, Mojtaba Ghaedi, Amir Hossein Pourdavood, Lohrasb Taheri, Somayeh Mehrpour, Mehrdad Malekshoar, Bibi Mona Razavi, Fatemeh Eftekharian.

   Background: Traditional medicine, rooted in ancient history, resurged due to concerns over synthetic pharmaceuticals' adverse effects. Persian medicine, emphasizing medicinal plants, aligns with global healthcare recommendations. Both Iranian and Chinese medicine have influenced medical knowledge historically. Patients worldwide value Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for chronic and severe illnesses. This study goal was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of herbal medicine research in Iranian and Chinese CAM clinical trials to identify trends, patterns, and differences in research productivity and impact.
Materials and Methods: This bibliometric study compared Chinese and Iranian CAM clinical trials using Web of Science data. It focused on RCTs, applying search terms for CAM and Chinese or Iranian CAM, with exclusion criteria to filter out irrelevant publications. No limitation was posed on publication time. The dataset included author information, article details, keywords, and citation history. It calculated the Annual Growth Rate (AGR) and used visual tools like the Three-Field Plot to illustrate associations. Additionally, Lotka's Law was applied to author productivity, and a co-citation collaboration network was analyzed using Bibliometrix r package.
Results: Key findings for Iranian CAM include 71 documents by 342 authors with an average document age of 3.11 years. Chinese CAM featured 255 documents by 1857 authors with an average document age of 5.75 years. Iranian CAM showed a negative annual growth rate of -18.05%, while Chinese CAM had a positive rate of 5.65%. The included studies for Chinese CAM span from 2004 to 2024, while those for Iranian CAM range from 2015 to 2024. The most cited Iranian CAM document had 66 citations, and in Chinese CAM, "TONG XL, 2012" and "LIU XL, 2019" had the highest total citations. Decentralized research practices were observed in China, while Tehran and Shiraz universities led clinical trials in Iran.
Conclusion: Our study indicates differing research trends in Iranian and Chinese herbal medicine. Iranian CAM research showed a declining trend, with Tehran and Shiraz universities leading clinical trials, while Chinese CAM research displayed a growing landscape with a more decentralized approach and greater historical prominence among authors.

Keywords:  Bibliometrics; Herbal Medicine; Persian Medicine; Traditional Chinese Medicine

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.31661/gmj.v15i.3573
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2026 Jul 28. 123(30): e2524119123

Gender pay gaps in the social sciences.

Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy, Joshua Graff Zivin, Gaurav Khanna, Elizabeth Lyons, Marta Serra-Garcia.

  We provide a longitudinal, multifield analysis of the gender pay gap in academia that directly links individual-level salaries to measures of scholarly productivity. Using administrative data from the ten campuses that comprise the University of California system, we combine detailed pay records with bibliometric data on publications and citations for faculty in five major social science fields. We find a raw gender pay gap of 23%, which decreases to 4.3% after controlling for field, campus, and cohort. Including controls for job title and scholarly productivity has little effect on the estimated gap, although they substantially increase explanatory power. A decomposition shows that 17% of the gap is unexplained, persisting across junior and senior faculty. We also find a large, persistent gender gap in publications, but no citation gap once output and career length are considered. Field-level analysis reveals that pay gaps are not universal: They persist in Business, Sociology, and Anthropology, but are absent in Economics, Political Science, and smaller social science fields. Our results suggest that pay transparency is insufficient to eliminate salary disparities and that more equal representation within the field is not a prerequisite for pay equity. Our study isolates the residual gap that remains unexplained by productivity or seniority, challenging the view that these factors fully account for gender pay differences. Taken together, our findings highlight the role of field-specific norms and institutional structures, offering directions to promote equitable compensation in academia.

Keywords:  academic productivity; academic salaries; gender pay gap

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2524119123
Galen Med J. 2026 ;15 e3885

Reasons for Retraction of Biomedical Articles Written by Eastern Mediterranean and Turkish Authors; A Comprehensive Cross-Sectional Study During 2010-2019 : Short title: Reasons for Retraction of Biomedical Articles.

Kezhal Bijari, Mehrdad Askarian, Mehrdad Askarian.

   Background: Article retraction means removing a published article from the journal because of ethical issues or scientific errors in order to correct the literature. In this study, we aimed to determine the reasons for retracting biomedical articles written by authors from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included all retracted biomedical articles with first authors affiliated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, or Turkey, retracted between September 1, 2010, and September 1, 2019. Data were extracted from Retraction Watch, MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC), Clarivate Analytics, and Scopus. Each article's information was entered into a data collection form and analyzed using SPSS version 24.
Results: Of 436 retracted articles, Iran had the highest number (223), followed by Turkey (80), Egypt (72), Saudi Arabia (35), and Pakistan (26). Common causes of retraction included plagiarism, duplication, authorship issues, and fake peer review. In Iran, fake peer review (42.6%) and authorship issues (41.3%) were most prevalent. Significant inter- country differences were found in retraction frequency and causes. The most affected fields were biology, biochemistry, oncology, cardiovascular, surgery, and pathology.
Conclusion: The results showed that scientific misconducts (plagiarism, duplication, authorship issues, and fake peer review) were the main reasons for retracting the articles in the five studied countries. To reduce such misconducts, regional regulatory policies, improved editorial practices, and enhanced research ethics training are urgently needed.

Keywords:  Article Retraction; Authorship; Plagiarism; Retracted Article; Retractions; Scientific Misconduct

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.31661/gmj.v15i.3885
Nature. 2026 Jul 23.

Could small-team science be dying out?

James Mitchell Crow.



Keywords:  Authorship; Publishing

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02174-4
Bioscience. 2026 Jul;76(7): 582-586

Citation self-awareness for a fairer academic publishing landscape.

Miriam Beck, Pavanee Annasawmy, Deborah Birre, Michela Busana, Nicolas Casajus, Camille Coux, Clara Marino, Nicolas Mouquet, Lisa Nicvert, Brunno F Oliveira, Cathleen Petit-Cailleux, Axelle Tortosa, Mithila Unkule, Chloé Vagnon, Devi Veytia.



Keywords:  academic publishing; citation bias; citation practices; publishing ethics; shared profit publishing

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag028
J Clin Epidemiol. 2026 Jul 24. pii: S0895-4356(26)00305-7. [Epub ahead of print] 112429

Paper mills in evidence synthesis: reported involvement among retracted systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Emir Begagić, Faruk Skenderi, Semir Vranić.

   OBJECTIVE: To investigate reported paper mill involvement among retracted systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SR/MAs), and to compare retracted SR/MAs with and without reported paper mill involvement with respect to temporal patterns, disciplinary profile, country recorded in the database, and retraction characteristics.
STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study based on the Retraction Watch database. Records were screened to identify retracted SR/MAs. Reported paper mill involvement was assigned only when explicitly stated in the Retraction Watch record or associated retraction information; fake peer review was coded separately. Group comparisons used the Pearson chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests. Associations with reported paper mill involvement were estimated using univariable Poisson regression with robust variance and reported as prevalence ratios (PRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). These analyses were treated as exploratory, non-inferential internal contrasts within the dataset of already retracted SR/MAs.
RESULTS: Among 69,163 retracted publications in the Retraction Watch dataset, 1,071 (1.5%) were identified as retracted SR/MAs. Of those, 191 (17.8%) were paper mill-associated and 880 (82.2%) were not. In the database country field, China was recorded for 732/1,071 retracted SR/MAs (68.3%) and 177/191 SR/MAs with reported paper mill involvement (92.7%). The annual number of paper mill-associated SR/MAs peaked in 2023 (n=152). Within this restricted dataset, paper mill-associated SR/MAs had a longer median time to retraction (511 vs 459 days; p=0.024), more frequent results-related concerns (89.0% vs 30.0%), data issues (53.4% vs 17.5%), referencing concerns (53.9% vs 13.6%), and ethical concerns (8.9% vs 2.6%) (all p<0.001), and less frequent multi-country authorship (8.9% vs 17.6%; p=0.004). In univariable Poisson regression analyses restricted to retracted SR/MAs, larger observed proportions of reported paper mill involvement were seen among records linked to China in the database country field (PR 5.86, 95% CI 3.45-9.93), more recent publication years (PR 1.20 per 1-year increase, 95% CI 1.16-1.23), the medical broad domain (PR 3.66, 95% CI 1.66-8.08), and records with results-related concerns (PR 11.88, 95% CI 7.68-18.39). These PRs should not be interpreted as likelihoods, risks, or rates beyond the analyzed Retraction Watch subset.
CONCLUSION: In this Retraction Watch-based analysis, reported paper mill involvement was identified in 191/1,071 retracted SR/MAs (17.8%). These records were most often linked to China in the database country field (177/191; 92.7%) and clustered in recent years, particularly 2023. These findings should be interpreted as descriptive patterns within detected and retracted records, not as country-level rates, comparative performance indicators, or estimates of the true prevalence of paper mill activity.

Keywords:  Evidence Synthesis; Peer Review; Research; Research Integrity; Retracted Publication; Scientific Misconduct

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2026.112429
J Surg Educ. 2026 Jul 20. pii: S1931-7204(26)00197-2. [Epub ahead of print]83(9): 104065

The Rise of Productivity Culture: Assessing Trends in Scholarly Output Among Medical Students Applying to General Surgery.

Tyler Lackland, Benjamin Pointer, Seraphim Le, Aakash Nagarapu, Melissa Cote, Sneha Manikandan, Josie Chen, Anthony Dongfack, Ayyan Ahmad, Joseph Platz.

   OBJECTIVE: To evaluate longitudinal trends in scholarly output among U.S. MD applicants to general surgery and assess associations with match competitiveness.
DESIGN: Repeated cross-sectional, cycle-level longitudinal analysis of publicly available the National Resident Matching Program data from 2007 to 2024.
SETTING: United States National Resident Matching Program.
PARTICIPANTS: U.S. MD senior applicants to general surgery residency programs across 9 match cycles.
RESULTS: Mean scholarly output among U.S. MD applicants increased from 2.2 in 2007 to 10.9 in 2024. The proportion of matched applicants with 5 or more scholarly products increased significantly over time (β = 0.037/year, p < 0.001) while those with zero scholarly products declined (β =-0.015/year, p < 0.001). Matched applicants demonstrated higher scholarly output than unmatched applicants (5.6 vs 3.8 products).
CONCLUSIONS: Scholarly output among general surgery applicants has increased substantially over time, driven primarily by temporal trends rather than changes in competitiveness. Our findings suggest a shift toward a "productivity culture" in residency applications, with implications for surgical education structure, including equity and residency selection practices.

Keywords:  Medical student; bibliometrics; general surgery residency; research; residency match; scholarly productivity

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2026.104065