Rodriguez-Unda Nelson A, Webster Nicholas D, Verheyden Charles N
Division of Plastic Surgery, Texas A&M, Baylor Scott and White Hospital, Tex.
Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2020 Jan 17;8(1):e2617. doi: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000002617. eCollection 2020 Jan.
Plastic surgery is an attractive specialty to medical students. Residency training programs have the luxury of selecting their trainees from the "cream of the crop" from United States medical schools. Because of the steep competition for PGY-1 integrated program positions, the temptation exists for applicants to falsify parts of their applications, particularly those parts that are difficult to verify.
A retrospective analysis of the Integrated Plastic Surgery applications from the years (2010-2013) was done. Two reviewers manually and independently handsearched each of the articles in the databases (Medline, Scopus, Clinical trials, Google scholar) additionally, a specialized medical librarian corroborated. A ghost article was defined as the inability to find the listed applicant in the authorship list of the claimed article/abstract/chapter or the inability to find the submitted article. Misrepresentation was defined as a change in authorship order. Data were summarized and analyzed, generalized estimating equations model was used. SAS software, v9.4.
All 392 applicants were included, 159 (2010-2011), 120 (2011-2012), and 119 (2012-2013). The number of manually reviewed records was 2,124. "Ghost" authorship was found in 234 articles out of 2,124 (11.02%). The overall rate of "Ghost" authorship in applicants to our program was found to be 34.4%, 135 applicants and misrepresentation in 5 cases (1.28%).
Ghost publications are present in Plastic Surgery applications, its trend is similar through the years, "protective" factors are: first authorship and published peer reviewed abstract/article.
整形外科对医学生来说是一个有吸引力的专业。住院医师培训项目有幸能从美国医学院的“佼佼者”中挑选学员。由于PGY - 1综合项目职位竞争激烈，申请人存在伪造申请材料部分内容的诱惑，尤其是那些难以核实的部分。
对2010 - 2013年整形外科综合申请进行回顾性分析。两名评审人员手动并独立地在数据库（Medline、Scopus、临床试验、谷歌学术）中逐一搜索每篇文章，此外，一名专业医学图书馆员进行了核实。“幽灵文章”定义为在所声称的文章/摘要/章节的作者名单中找不到列出的申请人，或者找不到提交的文章。不当陈述定义为作者顺序的改变。对数据进行总结和分析，使用广义估计方程模型。SAS软件，v9.4。
共纳入392名申请人，其中2010 - 2011年有159名，2011 - 2012年有120名，2012 - 2013年有119名。人工审核的记录有2124条。在2124篇文章中有234篇（11.02%）发现了“幽灵”作者身份。在我们项目的申请人中，“幽灵”作者身份的总体发生率为34.4%，即135名申请人，5例存在不当陈述（1.28%）。
整形外科申请中存在“幽灵”出版物，多年来其趋势相似，“保护”因素为：第一作者身份以及发表的同行评审摘要/文章。
