Academic Promotion of Physicians in Medical Schools: A Special Focus on Primary Health Care in Taiwan

The quality and quantity of papers published in journals play a crucial role in achieving an academic promotion in medical schools. Reports on the criteria for promotion and their impact on different specialties, especially on primary health care, which has low research output, are rare. We investigated the scoring systems generally adopted for academic promotion at most medical schools in Taiwan. The weighted scores were derived from the multiplication of weights from categories of paper, journal impact factor, or ranking in a certain category by impact factor, and author order. To determine the thresholds of papers required for different levels of promotion, we took papers in the highest- or lowest-ranked journals in the primary health care category in 2019 Journal Citation Reports as examples. Considering publications in the highest-ranked journals, a median of 4.6 first or corresponding author papers were required for a professorship, as well as 3.3 for an associate professorship, and 2.5 for an assistant professorship. In contrast, a median of 30, 20, and 13.5 papers in the lowest-ranked journals was required for the corresponding positions. Thus, academic promotions for primary health care educators in Taiwan are highly demanding. The detrimental effects of scoring systems deserve further research.