Trends in Research Productivity Among Residents Applying For United States Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Fellowships.

Background: Little empirical research has been done on factors evaluated in the fellowship matching process, this study intends to evaluate the impact of research productivity.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify research trends and characterize the academic profiles of recent Foot and Ankle (F&A) fellows in the United States when they applied for fellowship.

Methods: The American Orthopedic F&A Society website was used to identify accepted fellows between the years 2017-2023. A retrospective bibliometric analysis was performed using the total number of publications up to December 31st of the year prior to the start of fellowship, collected from each fellow's Scopus profiles. Recorded data included total number of publications, citations, authorship position, and publications with a F&A focus. Data was compared between academic versus community fellowship programs, and by years, fellowship and residency program region, medical degree, and sex.

Results: A total of 444 F&A fellows from 2017 to 2023 were identified, and 404 (90.99%) were verified. Fellows averaged 5.288±10.075 publications and 60.646±232.297 citations. Fellows were listed as first author in 31.35% publications and middle author in 65.08% publications, while 93.81% of fellows had at least 1 publication, and 54.95% percent had at least 1 first author publication (Table 1). A statistically significant increase in average number of publications was identified between the years 2017 and 2018 and the years 2020-2023 (Table 2).

Conclusion: There exists a statistically significant, increasing trend in research productivity of F&A fellows across the years 2017-2023. Over half of fellows published at least one first authorship article, and just under half had a publication focused on F&A. Level of Evidence: II.