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Publishing on a Shoestring: Understanding Barriers, Challenges, and Unique Opportunities to Academic Productivity in Psychiatry

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Clinical track faculty within psychiatry may struggle to meet goals for academic scholarship, particularly publishing. In this review, we explore potential barriers to publication and solutions to support early career psychiatrists.

Recent Findings

Current evidence highlights challenges for faculty throughout academic practice, including barriers at the individual and systems levels. Within psychiatry, publication has favored biological studies with significant gaps in the literature serving as both an opportunity and challenge. Interventions underscore the importance of mentorship and propose incentivization to facilitate academic scholarship among clinical track faculty.

Summary

Barriers to publication within psychiatry exist at the level of the individual, system, and field itself. This review shares potential solutions from across the medical literature and an example of an intervention from our own department. More studies are needed within the field of psychiatry to understand how to best support early career faculty members in their academic productivity, growth, and development.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Michelle Riba, MD, MS, and Laura Hirshbein, MD, PhD, for their inspiration and support with this manuscript. The editors would like to thank Dr. Madhu Nagalla for taking the time to review this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, University of Michigan, UH 9C, 1500 E. Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Carrie Tamarelli, Jennifer Baumhauer, Bailey Fay, Nasuh Malas & Heather Schultz

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, University of Michigan, UH 9C, 1500 E. Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Nasuh Malas

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Tamarelli, C., Baumhauer, J., Fay, B. et al. Publishing on a Shoestring: Understanding Barriers, Challenges, and Unique Opportunities to Academic Productivity in Psychiatry. Curr Psychiatry Rep 25, 327–335 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-023-01433-9

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