Research on effective quantitative indicators of medical mentors’ academic cooperation to improve their development

Academic collaboration not only directly benefits mentors’ performance but also positively impacts postgraduates’ development indirectly. This study aims to explore indicators that can effectively quantify the collaboration among medical mentors, thereby providing guidance for the collaboration and development of the mentors. A total of 6158 publications of 319 medical mentors, mainly from 7 Chinese universities, from 2011 to 2021 were retrieved from public databases. Five dependent variables, six independent indicators and four control variables were finally constructed and included in our dataset. Mentors were classified into an excellent group and a control group based on their academic performance. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation analysis, the Mann‒Whitney U test, linear regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The partnership ability index (PHI) had the highest influence on the papers published (β = 0.627, p < 0.001), h-index (β = 0.749, p < 0.001), the funding received (β = 0.363, p < 0.001), and the number of collaborators had the greatest impact on the yearly citation rate (β = 0.689, p < 0.001) and the number of postgraduates trained (β = 0.647, p < 0.001). The PHI and number of collaborators had good power for predicting mentor performance. The AUC values (area under the ROC curve) all were higher than 0.7. A PHI value greater than 4 was required, which provides specific guidance for the development of collaborative behaviors of individuals who aspire to become high-quality medical mentors. Moreover, there was a significant difference in the PHI (z = -3.615, p < 0.001), but not in the number of collaborators between male and female mentors in the excellent group. This indicated the PHI is the main factor in top female mentors’ performance. The findings suggest that administrators should pay attention to medical mentors, especially those in the female group, in terms of their academic collaboration. By fostering collaborative projects and enhancing relevant education, as well as providing other resources, administrators can help medical mentors increase the number of academic coauthors and maintain stable collaborative relationships thereby improving academic performance and promoting excellence in mentorship. Not applicable.