Association between residents' scholarly activities and publication requirement policy

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundScholarship is recognized as important in residency training worldwide. The Japan Pediatric Society (JPS) enacted a reform in 2017 to require publication of an article as a prerequisite for taking the board certification test, with the goal of increasing scholarly activity.MethodsThe purpose of this study was to provide a detailed description of the trends in residents' scholarly activities related to the JPS reform. A secondary analysis was performed on the cross‐sectional database of pediatrics residents who took the certification test in 2015–2018.ResultsThe enrolled participants were 2399 residents of which 79.7% passed the test. Publication of any type of article increased significantly (21%–22% to 100%; 0.1 to 0.3/person‐year) after the implementation of the JPS reform, whereas academic presentations did not (89% to 91%; 1.2 to 1.3/person‐year), both in terms of the percentage of the number of those who created them and the average rate of research production. Not only Japanese articles (11%–13% to 49%–53%; 0.04 to 0.15–0.17/person‐year) or case reports (10%–14% to 51%–52%; 0.03–0.05 to 0.16–0.17/person‐year), but also English articles (4%–5% to 15%–16%; 0.01–0.02 to 0.05/person‐year) and original articles (5% to 11%–17%; 0.01 to 0.03–0.05/person‐year) increased significantly. The number of each type of article publication was correlated with success in the board certification test (odds ratio 1.5–1.8).ConclusionsScholarly activities of pediatrics residents were enhanced by the JPS implementation of the article requirement policy, which is crucial to fostering a scholarly culture. The most efficient measures to promote scholarship need to be persistently investigated.