Trends in research productivity of residents applying for orthopedic sports medicine fellowship

Objectives: Though there are no research requirements to match into an orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship, many applicants are productive in research endeavors during residency. We hypothesize that the number of publications by Orthopaedic sports medicine applicants are increasing. Methods: A list of current and recent sports medicine fellows was compiled from publicly accessible information on sports medicine fellowship websites. Articles published while the fellow was a resident were identified via publicly available search engines. The following information was collected: year of fellowship and years of residency, fellowship program, geographic location of fellowship program, total number of publications (noting specifically first and last author publications), number of publications in high impact orthopaedic journals (AJSM, JBJS Am, JSES, or Arthroscopy). Results: Overall, 189 fellowship-matched surgeons from 2010 - 2017 were identified. There were 746 publications (average of 3.95 per fellow), with 218 (29.2%) in high impact orthopaedic journals. Surgeons who completed their fellowship during the 2016-17 academic year, published on average 5.42 publications per fellow. Fellowship applicants in the Northeast region had the highest number of total publications (359 publications, 48.1% of all publications; 6.41 publications per fellow). Applicants were listed most often as middle authors (462 publications, 61.9%). Conclusions: There has been an overall increase in the number of publications among sports medicine fellowship applicants in the last several academic years. Fellowship programs in the northeast United States tended to match applicants with a higher number of publications.