Publication Trends of Residents Accepted for Shoulder and Elbow Fellowships

This study aims to evaluate the research productivity trends in orthopaedic residents who were selected for shoulder and elbow fellowships from 2010 to 2019. We hypothesize that residents matching into orthopaedic shoulder and elbow fellowships are increasing both their publication number and publication quality from 2010 to 2019. Fellows of orthopaedic shoulder and elbow programs from 2010 to 2019 were identified through publicly accessible information on fellowship programs. Each fellow’s publication data during their residency was collected via publicly available search engines, and analyzed to include: fellowship year, residency years, fellowship program and location, total publications, number of publications in high-impact general orthopaedic and shoulder and elbow journals, and authorship position. A total of 176 orthopaedic shoulder and elbow fellows from 17 different programs were identified and included in the study. The fellows produced a total of 668 publications, published 172 articles in high impact journals, and had first authorship on 49% of the studies. On average, there were 3.8 publications per fellow per year from 2010 to 2019. There were 5.7 publications produced per fellow in 2018–2019, compared to just 2.92 publications per fellow in 2010–2011. Overall, there was an increasing trend in publications, publications in high impact journals, and first authorship publications per applicant matching into shoulder and elbow fellowship from 2010 to 2019. (Journal of Surgical Orthopaedic Advances 31(4):205–208, 2022)

Key words: shoulder and elbow, orthopaedic surgery fellowship, research, publications, orthopaedic surgery residency