Success in publication by graduate students in psychiatry in Brazil: an empirical evaluation of the relative influence of English proficiency and advisor expertise

BMC Medical Education

Geraldo F Busatto⁴  Beny Lafer²  Anna Maria Carmagnani¹  Álvaro Machado Dias⁵  Bernardo dos Santos³  Alexandre Cunha⁴ 

[1]English Department, School of Philosophy, Literature, and the Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

[2]Department of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo School of Medicine, São Paulo, Brazil

[3]Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

[4]Núcleo de Apoio à Pesquisa em Neurociência Aplicada (NAPNA, Center for the Support of Research in Neuroscience), University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

[5]Laboratory of Clinical Neuroscience, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP, Federal University of São Paulo), São Paulo, Brazil

关键词: Psychiatry;    Journal impact factor;    Publishing;    Translation;    Language;    Publication in English;    Knowledge of English;   

Others  :  1090283
DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-14-238

 received in 2013-09-02, accepted in 2014-10-13,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

This study evaluates the success of graduate students in psychiatry in an emerging country, in terms of the quantity and quality of their publication productivity (given by the number of papers and impact factors of the journals in which they publish). We investigated to what extent student proficiency in English and the scientific capabilities of academic advisors predict that success.

Methods

Our sample comprised 43 master’s and doctoral students in psychiatry (n = 28 and n = 15, respectively) at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine, in São Paulo, Brazil. We collected information about their knowledge of English and the ways in which they wrote their articles to be submitted to periodicals published in English. Multiple regression analyses were carried out in order to investigate the influence English proficiency, h-index of supervisors and use of language editing assistance had on the number and impact of student publications.

Results

Although 60% of students scored ≥80 (out of 100) on English tests given at admission to the graduate program, 93.09% of the sample used some form of external editing assistance to produce their papers in English. The variables “number of publications” and “impact factor of journals” were significantly related to each other (r = 0.550, p < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis revealed that the impact factor of periodicals where students published their articles as first authors correlated significantly not only with student proficiency in English at admission (p = 0.035), but also with the degree of language editing assistance (p = 0.050) and the h-index of the academic advisor (p = 0.050).

Conclusions

Albeit relevant, knowledge of English was not the key factor for the publication success of the graduate students evaluated. Other variables (h-index of the advisor and third-party language editing assistance) appear to be also important predictors of success in publication.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Cunha et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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