Success in publication by graduate students in psychiatry in Brazil: an empirical evaluation of the relative influence of English proficiency and advisor expertise

BACKGROUND: This study evaluates the success of graduate students in psychiatry in an emerging country, in terms of the quantity and quality of their publication productivity (given by the number of papers and impact factors of the journals in which they publish). We investigated to what extent student proficiency in English and the scientific capabilities of academic advisors predict that success. METHODS: Our sample comprised 43 master’s and doctoral students in psychiatry (n = 28 and n = 15, respectively) at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine, in São Paulo, Brazil. We collected information about their knowledge of English and the ways in which they wrote their articles to be submitted to periodicals published in English. Multiple regression analyses were carried out in order to investigate the influence English proficiency, h-index of supervisors and use of language editing assistance had on the number and impact of student publications. RESULTS: Although 60% of students scored ≥80 (out of 100) on English tests given at admission to the graduate program, 93.09% of the sample used some form of external editing assistance to produce their papers in English. The variables “number of publications” and “impact factor of journals” were significantly related to each other (r = 0.550, p < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis revealed that the impact factor of periodicals where students published their articles as first authors correlated significantly not only with student proficiency in English at admission (p = 0.035), but also with the degree of language editing assistance (p = 0.050) and the h-index of the academic advisor (p = 0.050). CONCLUSIONS: Albeit relevant, knowledge of English was not the key factor for the publication success of the graduate students evaluated. Other variables (h-index of the advisor and third-party language editing assistance) appear to be also important predictors of success in publication. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1472-6920-14-238) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.