Dear Editor,
We would like to thank the author for the thoughtful and constructive letter regarding our article and for highlighting the important educational and ethical dimensions of mentorship in residency training.1, 2 We agree that mentorship should be viewed not only as a means to improve publication outcomes but also as a central component of scientific training and professional development for residents.
The author appropriately emphasizes the educational value of resident-led authorship and the role of structured mentorship in fostering independent researchers. We fully acknowledge that first authorship represents an important learning milestone and that effective mentorship should aim to transfer academic skills rather than merely accelerate publication.
At the same time, we believe that our findings should be interpreted with caution, particularly with respect to the underlying reasons for first-authorship patterns. Our bibliometric design allowed us to identify the first author and publication outcomes, but it did not permit us to determine why the first author was not the resident in certain cases. Several factors may contribute to this observation, including loss of interest after graduation, time constraints, relocation to other institutions, or expansion of the original thesis into a broader collaborative project. Therefore, these differences are likely multifactorial and should be interpreted cautiously.
An additional aspect that deserves consideration is the substantial proportion of theses that were never converted into publications. In our cohort, 62.9% of radiology residency theses remained unpublished.2 This finding indicates that a large amount of scientific data generated during residency training does not reach the academic literature. In this context, the active involvement of supervisors may sometimes reflect an effort to ensure that valuable clinical and research data are incorporated into the scientific literature.
The goal of training independent researchers, as emphasized by the author, represents a cornerstone of residency education. The process of converting a residency thesis into a publication provides an important opportunity for acquiring these skills. However, the successful completion of this process is inherently bidirectional and requires both effective mentorship and sufficient academic motivation on the part of the resident. In this regard, institutional strategies that encourage resident engagement, provide dedicated time for research and manuscript preparation, and support structured mentorship may be particularly beneficial. Moreover, the recent increase in radiology residency positions in Türkiye may place additional demands on existing faculty resources, which could further challenge individualized mentorship.3 Strengthening institutional support and mentoring frameworks may therefore help sustain both educational quality and academic productivity.
Finally, we share the author’s view that future studies incorporating qualitative assessments of mentorship practices would provide valuable insight into how different supervisory models influence both publication outcomes and long-term academic development.
We sincerely thank the author for contributing to this meaningful discussion and for extending the impact of our work beyond bibliometric description alone.
