Publishing as a medical student
Last updated:
You do not need to be a specialist to publish, but you do need a mentor, honest authorship and a trustworthy journal. This guide covers where students can start and the traps to avoid. Practical suggestions are marked as advice.
Where students can start
Look for projects that already exist: a supervisor's ongoing study, a department audit, a student research club, or a systematic review team that needs help screening studies. Joining a project is faster than starting one and teaches you the methods.
The ICMJE criteria apply to students the same way as to anyone: an author substantially contributes to design, data or analysis; helps draft or critically revise the paper; approves the final version; and accepts accountability. If you only collected data and did nothing else, you may deserve an acknowledgment instead of authorship. So ask for a task that also lets you write or analyse, and agree in writing what you will do.
Case reports, letters and reviews
The ICMJE says that case reports, narrative reviews and editorials can be less structured than original research, which follows the IMRAD pattern. Reviews must describe how studies were located, selected and combined, and for systematic reviews this is mandatory. Practical advice:
- Case report: you need a real patient and your supervisor's agreement; check the journal's patient consent requirements. Use the journal's case report guide on this site.
- Letter to the editor: a short, focused comment on a published article. Read the article closely first.
- Narrative review: pick a narrow topic, and write down how you searched for sources.
- Systematic review: is demanding work; plan it with your mentor and follow PRISMA, which the ICMJE names as the reporting guideline.
Working with a mentor
- Meet at the start and agree on the question, your tasks, deadlines and who will be an author, in what order. WAME recommends deciding authorship and order early.
- Ask what the mentor expects of you each week, and report progress in a short message.
- Keep your notes and data files organised and shared with the team.
- Your mentor, or the authors together, decide authorship questions; the ICMJE says editors do not adjudicate disputes and the institution investigates when authors cannot agree.
- If you use an AI tool, say so when you submit. The ICMJE asks for disclosure and says AI cannot be an author.
Avoiding predatory journals
WAME describes predatory or pseudo-journals as those that charge fees while skipping or minimising real peer review, and says there is no single test. It lists warning signs such as unidentified or unqualified editors, hidden fees, false claims about impact factors or indexing, names that resemble established journals, unclear peer review and implausibly fast review. It adds that no single feature proves a journal is predatory, so weigh the evidence. It also cautions that being absent from DOAJ does not prove a journal is illegitimate.
Use the Think. Check. Submit. checklist: can you verify the journal's ISSN; is the publisher named and reachable; are the review process and fees explained; is the journal listed in DOAJ if it is open access. The checklist's decision rule is to submit only if you can answer yes to most or all of the questions. Ask your mentor and your faculty librarian too, and do not answer unsolicited invitations to submit.