Do authorship disputes deter Indian medical students from pursuing research

Medicine, being an ever-expanding field, makes it crucial for doctors-in-training to understand research and its methodology and translate this into their clinical practice. However, in India, the response of medical students and residents in adopting this has been sluggish, primarily owing to high levels of stress attributed to the extensive academic curriculum, hectic duty hours, and shortage of workforce that leads to an unacceptably high patient load (1). Lack of funding and mentorship programmes, difficulty in data collection and analysis, and no additional credits awarded to students for the time invested act as additional barriers to taking up research projects (2). An important but rarely discussed disincentive is the disputes regarding credits awarded to research in a publication.