Weblog

As we all know, most of the medical students don’t really care about research and do it due to formality for the sake of USMLE matching. Sure, you'll say that research just boosts the CV and is not mandatory but did you really know the average USMLE IM matching applicant has around 5-9 research articles?

As such, I've observed usmle applicants literally practising the sole art of "you put me co-author, I put you co-author". As such the research articles processed and published by such, end up being low quality with minimum people involved in actually providing the science behind it.

Such papers also end up having like tons of authors sometimes. Personally, I've been added through so many WhatsApp groups where they practise this directly. Sure, just like them, I could have done this as well. Some part of me wanted to, especially after seeing profiles of many with more than 300 articles in 2 years! (not even senior researchers have these many)

Believe me or not, I've even had a guy message me wanting to do a "co-authorship exchange", to which I reject. Where is he now? Well, he has matched for IM residency in USMLE in this season (2026). The same guy has put countless messages in his own WhatsApp group selling authorship for 90$ each in name of APC. Sometimes, he would just be direct and not even defend it. Well, selling Authorships is a different thing altogether and so, I'll cover it in another weblog. Are there other people like him? Yes. I've had countless such offers. Example, Recently 5 months back, I've had a guy wanting me to give co-authorship of my 3 papers to him and in return, he'll hand me co-authorship in 3 of his, making my research count double, 6!

But I've decided I will not pursue such paths and the path, I take, to be righteous and correct. End of the day, their CV always does shine over people like mine. But, the fact that I did not nor do I plan to get involved in this, is something which keeps me motivated sometimes to learn more things!

P.s. Where do I find such people? idk. Should you do the same? Upto you. I will never.

As I mentioned previously about the co-authorship financial transaction model and my struggles as an open source research developer, I will be discussing about my "association" between these two.

There are tons of research groups on all kinds of social media, including Linkedin, WhatsApp, Telegram, and even Instagram. So, at one point, you end up being in atleast a few of those. Unfortunately, the type of groups I would get added to, or come accross, would have the classic "co-authorship financial transaction" model primarily. How do you identify in online groups? Keep an eye for the triad: No permission to message publically in the group (most of the times); The group administrators flex published articles quite frequently (each having high number of co-authors); Limited seats "research opportunities" instead of call for actual peer level collaborations.

How do these work? The administrators of the group publicly message indirectly hinting towards this model. It could be indirect such as supporting or contributing via APC while publishing for free of cost via corresponding author's open access university agreement. To avail any transaction, you simply need to privately reply to their call for "research opportunities" and co-ordinate directly.

There are some medical residents too, who have strict deadlines for publishing research articles during their medical residency years, and end up paying and getting co-authorship for ease of life.

I was attracted to this idea of selling. Not only did participation of medical residents in this model gave me a sense of "surability", it meant I could now fund, scale my research softwares with the money. NO MORE of those trash streamlit interfaces, vercel/github websites, trashy 1GB RAM backend limits, etc. I would have freedom to work solely on the basis of output accuracy! Sure, I might get my name blacklisted by journals if they were to find about it, I was willing to take the risk. You'd ask, Why not just approach open-source research communities which provide financial support for such projects?

Let me answer you with a fact, the probability of getting one in academic research software development is around 10% to 15% success rate. That probability percentage and factors like my age (me being 19 when I published 3 softwares (NOS-TLPlot, Critiplot, ReviewAid)), lack of collaborations and me working "solo" for all the stages of research development, make me opposite of a strong canditate. Strict deadines, Serious financial accountability, Software performance based finance, One time finance deposit, are some of more factors.

So, The final question, How many co-authorships did I sell? How much did I earn? I did'nt. I simply never did. As a result, due to no financial aid and lack of personal finance, I never really could make the research softwares which I had in my mind for which I needed funding. Every software I made, ended up being "just some software running on free resources". However, I do have my eyes set on 'AI in Radiology' and in the near future, I might save up, develop a commercial software, set a source of income, and hopefully, be lesser limited.