Although medical research by French radiology residents is encouraged, their publication productivity remains unknown. Thus, we aimed to assess and analyze the publication rate of medical theses and the overall academic productivity of radiology residents who graduated in 2009 and 2010.

The list of radiology residents and imaging theses were obtained from the French internet database of university theses. The main characteristics of the theses were recorded and correlated with associated publications identified by scanning the PubMed database. All other publications by French radiology residents not related to the theses were also obtained, described and compared to published theses.

Seventy-nine out of 224 (35.3%) medical theses written by French radiology residents in 2009 and 2010 were transformed into articles published in Medline-indexed journals. Residents were first authors in 69% (60/87) of these articles. The factors associated with publication of the thesis were a prospective design (P=0.01) and the publication as a first author of an original study not related to the thesis (P=0.01). Seventy-one percent of the residents had published at least one other article, including 36.6% as first authors.

Academic productivity of French radiology residents is high thanks to published theses and other articles.