if you've been following me on this
channel for a while then you'll know
that throughout my time at university
i've managed to do a decent amount of
scientific research and i get quite a
few questions from you guys about it in
the comments down below as well so in
this video i'm gonna talk to you about
exactly the steps that i took to find a
pi or principal investigator and get
some scientific research done that
eventually led to a couple of
publications let's get into it
what is up guys karma medic here and
welcome back to another dose so for
those of you watching that don't go to
medical school where publishing is quite
common or you just haven't thought about
a publication you might be wondering why
do people want to get published at
university now this can be for a couple
of reasons like wanting to learn more
about a particular topic you're
interested in being able to contribute
to the scientific literature the fact
that publishing can help your job
applications in the future or just that
everyone around you is doing it i think
it's important for you to understand
what your reasons are for getting
published to begin with because
publishing something in medical school
or in university takes a lot of time a
lot of effort and a lot of dedication
it's not something that you want to go
into lightly so think about the value
that publishing is gonna have before you
even pursue it many students including
myself get publications because we know
that it's good for rcv and for future
job applications and that's not
necessarily a bad thing it just helps
ease expectations and lets you know what
it is you're getting into and why if you
do want to publish something then make
sure it's in a field that you're
interested in because trust me you're
going to spend a lot of time working on
it you can get publications with fairly
little effort and that's something that
i'll be talking about later on in the
video so make sure you stay tuned for
that but definitely don't put pressure
on yourself to publish and don't feel as
though publishing is critical to your
time at university or medical school a
lot of people think that publishing is a
must when it comes to helping their
career in the future and although there
are definitely benefits to publishing
there's plenty of other things that you
can do to advance yourself and boost
your cv to help you get jobs and make
your application stronger etc but if
publishing is important for your future
job applications then just make sure
that the journal that you're publishing
in is indexed in pubmed and has a pubmed
id okay so how do you actually publish
something at university once you've
decided what topic or field you want to
publish in you're going to need to find
a pi or principal investigator or a
mentor now helping find a pi is as
simple as searching your university name
research and finding a list of
clinicians and academics and professors
who are carrying out research at your
university once you've found that list
you want to go through it and find out
who's doing research in the field that
you're interested in who's accepting
students for research and who's
publishing regularly you want to join a
research project where the pi has a
history of publishing frequently and
publishing a lot because that increases
your own chances of getting published in
the near future now once you've decided
on the ones that might be a good fit for
you you need to start reaching out to
them now there's a delicate balance here
you want to send an email that's
personalized enough to the researchers
that they know that you're interested in
them and you want to work specifically
with them but then on the other hand
you're a student and you've got plenty
of other time commitments at university
and so you don't have time to be writing
out loads and loads of personalized
cover letters and emails and trust me
you'll be very lucky if you get accepted
on the first couple of emails you send
out so generally you need to send out
quite a few so when you reach out to
them send them a personal but friendly
email expressing interest in their work
specifically it's gonna go a long way if
you make these emails a bit more
personal as opposed to generalizing them
and mass emailing it to just a bunch of
people if you can show passion for their
work earlier on in the email then you'll
probably have a better chance of them
accepting you now not everyone is going
to be able to help you and trust me not
everyone is going to be able to email
you back you'll send out plenty of
emails and you'll never hear back from
them but do reach out to as many people
as you can to sort of cast your net wide
and increase the chances of you being
accepted for a research position and
even if the people that you're emailing
come back to you saying that they don't
have availability for you or something
along those lines you know make sure
that you respond and you thank them for
their time because you never know when
they might have a position available in
the future and they could reach out to
you again this can be easy to forget to
do but keeping in touch with your
academics and your professors your
clinicians at your university can be
very helpful down the line just to
emphasize this point of applying to as
many places and people as you possibly
can i remember in my second year at the
university of toronto actually i was
sending out these emails to apply for a
position for scientific research in the
hopes of getting a publication and i
sent over 60 emails 6-0 and none of them
ended up getting me a research position
which absolutely sucked at the time
because i put so much time and effort
into personalizing each email i had this
template where paragraphs 1 and 3 were
the same and then paragraph 2 was
completely personalized to their own
work their own research etc and then in
my third year of medical school at
king's college london i sent about 25
emails and i actually finally got
accepted to a research position but i
ended up turning it down because i got
another research position in canada and
i went back to do my research there it's
another story but all this to say make
sure you send out lots of emails because
there's tons of students who are
applying for these spots and you want to
stand out and you want to increase your
chances as much as possible also to say
don't be hard on yourself i'm sure these
people are very busy they're getting
tons of emails and if you don't manage
to get a research position you can
always try again next year so now once
you've found a mentor or a pi you need
to work on the relationship between the
two of you it's great to start by
setting up a quick initial meeting where
you can chat about the research what
they're doing and how you can get
involved now during this meeting it's
important that you do two things a is to
learn more about your mentor's specific
research interests and b is to see if
you feel you could have a good working
relationship with them you're going to
be spending a fair amount of time with
this mentor and their team so you want
to make sure that you choose one that
you feel you can work well with if
you're working with a mentor on their
current research project then i think
it's important to be upfront about your
goals and the outcomes for the work that
you're doing so consider talking about
the potential for publication and the
journals that you might want to be
applying to one of the benefits of
having a mentor is that they're going to
be so much more experienced than you in
the field of scientific research and so
don't be scared to lean on them for
asking about the logistics of publishing
you know what your best chances are if
there's a realistic chance of you being
published et cetera because they might
just say to you right off the bat you
know what i'm working on a research
project that's going to take about five
years to complete i don't expect it to
be published anytime soon if your main
priority is publishing then it might be
better for you to go to a different pi
now imagine knowing that information
upfront versus not asking about
publication and you start working for
them and then you're halfway through the
summer before you realize well this
isn't going to help me for my immediate
job applications i know it's a scary and
daunting thing to do to actually talk
about publishing but remember you know
researchers know exactly why you're
there almost every student who goes to
do scientific research wants to get
published and they're there to get
published there are a few who just love
doing scientific research which is
completely great but you know they know
this already so be honest about your
goals and ask them what the likelihood
of publishing might be and then even
after your research project is over stay
in touch with your mentors because you
know once the research is done they'll
likely be able to offer you future
opportunities if they're going to do
more research and if not they're just
really valuable connections and friends
to have in the scientific field
something that i do is every now and
again i'll drop an email to my pi or the
team that i was working with just
checking in with them how are things
going how's that research project going
just to keep in touch and keep things
going along before we move on to the
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a website or domain all right let's get
back to the video although finding a
mentor and joining a group of other
researchers is one of the main ways to
publish it's not always easy and instead
you might consider publishing something
on your own you can reach out to lower
impact journals with your interesting
ideas and tailor your work to their
research guidelines often medical
students can submit pitches for articles
that they want to write in
student-specific journals like the
student bmj are a good place to start
also these articles that you write for
student journals are probably going to
take a lot less time than if you're
publishing in one of the big high-impact
major journals another thing that you
might want to consider is checking in
with your department see if they offer
any summer research work often the work
is paid and you can land yourself a
publication off the back of it the good
thing about the summer ones is that
they'll have a time limit on them so
you'll only be working over the course
of the summer and so if you make your
intentions clear from the beginning and
there's a high chance of publication you
could secure yourself a publication
within a short period of time again be
sure that whatever you're applying for
you're at least a bit interested in or
passionate for because it's going to
take a long time now one of the easiest
and most common ways that university
students can get published is by writing
something called a letter to the editor
what you do is you find a journal that
you're interested in and you search for
an already published article that you
feel you could give your opinion on or
comment on or critique then you write an
article to the authors of that article
outlining your thoughts and then you ask
the journal to publish it this is by far
one of the easiest ways to get published
and it's a pretty common technique used
by medical students here in the uk now
one of the best things about this method
of publication is that you can get
together with a group of let's say five
friends each one of you writes their own
letter to the editor and each one of you
puts the names of the other four people
on each paper and so that way if any one
of the five of you gets published then
all of you will have your name on a
publication of course throughout the
writing and editing process you guys
will all help each other out and
contribute to each of the articles as
well but it's a great way to help
increase the chances of getting your
name on a published paper the only thing
i'd say here is again if you're going
down this route make sure that whatever
journal you're planning to get published
in attaches a pubmed id to the letters
to the editor that they publish this is
crucial because if it doesn't have a
pubmed id then a lot of places don't see
it as a full formal publication my
personal experience has been a bit of a
wild one with publishing in my second
year at the university of toronto i
submitted those 60 emails that i told
you about before and unfortunately it
didn't work out so then in my second
year of medical school i decided to
reach out to a whole bunch of pis both
in the uk and canada and finally one
accepted me in the uk which i turned
down and one also accepted me in canada
which i ended up going to and the
research i was doing was on ankylosing
spondylitis in a wet lab using mice
models it was honestly such an
incredible experience i worked very very
hard for many months over two years and
i learned a lot i spent pretty much two
entire summers start to finish both in
my second year of medical school and my
third year of medical school and all of
that work resulted in exactly zero
publications this is a great example of
when you start a research project you
put in tons of work and tons of time and
no publication comes out of it so like i
said before make sure you're interested
in the topic that you're working on and
ask about the publications and the
likelihood of publishing early and
upfront so that you can set your
expectations accordingly then in my
third year of medical school we did
something called the scholarly project
which is part of our course in medicine
where you do a piece of research with
one other medical student and you're
supervised by some clinicians now after
about an entire year of working on that
project every single week we finally
managed to get our work published which
was such an incredible feeling honestly
it felt so good to have all that hard
work pay off and one of the biggest
differences that i think helped lead to
a publication this time was the mentors
they worked so closely with us and
really pushed us to do everything right
in order to get published they helped us
a lot as this goes back to what i was
saying at the beginning it's really
important to find yourself a good mentor
someone who really cares about you and
cares about your future getting
published helping you get there etc and
then now in my final year of medical
school i've managed to get a publication
via the letter to the editor in a
journal so overall i've done quite a bit
of research in multiple countries and
i'm very happy to say and i'm very
thankful that at least some of that work
has been published the last bit of
advice that i'd like to give you on
publishing in university is to persist
unless you're really lucky publishing
takes a lot of time a lot of effort and
a lot of dedication even after a lot of
work papers can get rejected by journals
and ultimately you might not get
published this is actually fairly common
so it shouldn't put you off from doing
research to begin with but it's
important to keep in mind of course you
and your mentors can do specific things
in order to increase the chances of
getting published so you can be quite
selective with the journals that you
apply to and you can tailor your
research to the specific guidelines of
those journals but it isn't always
enough if you don't get published the
first time around you can always take
the research that you've done and
present it at a conference or apply to
other journals maybe some smaller impact
journals and increase your likelihood of
getting published and at the end of the
day even if you don't get published like
myself after all that work that i did in
canada i honestly learned a lot i had
such a great time and it was just a
completely new set of skills that i had
never used or learned before so
ultimately it was all a positive
experience so that is it guys that is my
best advice on how you can go ahead and
get published in university i hope this
video has been helpful and can point you
in the right direction i have a good
friend kenji here at king's college
london as well who has made a video
about getting published in university
i'll leave a link to it somewhere up
over here and in the description down
below and that is it for me i will catch
you in the next one
peace
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