Yes, that would be key, but I am sure that some institutions have higher yield research / publication rates. Just looking for some suggestions. Anybody?
Actually, it's people that you should be interested and not institutions. Good mentors are what you are looking for. You'll have to take a few things into consideration.
1) Mentor. You have to have a mentor that really genuinely cares. It's more rare than you think. Some people like to be a mentor because they like to be in a position of power and like to get the glory. There are others that really really care...the ones that will put in extra effort to talk through a project with you, they see excitement in your eyes and get excited themselves, they really care about your experience and make an effort to make it smooth when you hit a rough patch, they vouch for you with others, etc. Some of this comes as you build the relationship but you'll want to talk to others that have worked with the potential mentor and look at their publications. The caveat is that people will rarely relate bad experiences since they don't want to be know as a bad-mouther so you have to learn to read between the lines by looking at publications and when you talk to people.
2) Type of research. Do you want basic science or clinical research. As a medical student, clinical will mean epidemiological, survey. Large trials are not a good way to do research as these things take a long time to complete. Small pilot studies are an entirely different opportunity but you have to find people that run smaller pilot studies as well.
3) Look into funding as this can be a good source of mentors as well. The HHMI and Doris Duke are two such examples but many medical school will have internal funding for a year to allow their medical students to perform research. If you have a mentor at your home department that is supportive, this is better because you'll make a direct connection with your home department and be on a project that you can continue to work on even after the 1 - 1.5 years are done. If you are looking for this upcoming summer, then you are too late for the HHMI and perhaps the Doris Duke too (not sure off the top of my head) but internal funding should still be available.
4) Don't just gravitate toward a "big" name because there no worse thing to do than to go sit in a bigwig's lab and get little done and hope to have yourself on a paper two years out as a second author (because you won't be there regularly). If you go to such an institution, make sure you talk to people that have been in the lab before to get a flavor for their experience and see if it fits with what you want. There is nothing more useless than having a letter from a bigwig that says, "Joe Shmoe was in the lab and was a great dishwasher." (obviously, I'm exaggerating).
5) If you go into basic science research, you're gonna have to work your ass off (true for clinical research too). The people that I've seen succeed in a 1 to 1.5 year block with basic science have worked like dogs during that year and been collaborative (key to get other people to really help you out and to make good friends too) and have walked away with amazing results and papers too. You have to be realistic and realize that basic science takes time and experiments will fail..er, be learning lessons...as a rule before you get a successful one. The success is exhilarating when it happens but you'll have a lot of failures first and you have to persevere through this and keep going.
6) Location. Make sure it's a place that does not alienate you from everything and is truly a place you want to be. If you can interact with other residents and faculty, this is going to be an important component. Familiar nice people will always be preferred over unfamiliar people. On the other hand, if you are familiar and a jerk, you can "forget about it."
7) Publication. Just getting a publication is not good enough. You want to go into a system that is going to create opportunities for multiple publications. People with multiple publications will frequently trump those that only have one (unless it is in a high impact journal). Getting things in high impact journals can take many years though so you want to be mindful of that.
Finally, a good mentor will carry you much farther than the research that you do because they can be advocates of you. As an example, letters of recommendations are very important in the application process and a mentor that knows you well and has seen you work hard to publish is going to write kick-ass letters.
To answer your question about where to do research, you have to follow the mentors in the area. Yes, some institutions have more research funding than others but a lot of universities have top notch mentors and individual researchers. Find an area of interest and see who is publishing in that area and you can get a list of people that may be interesting. You can then see if you can get in contact with them and see who is amenable to getting you started.
The other intangible is that there may be young mentors that will work really hard to support you as well. These mentors are more risky since you won't have a much information about them but the upside can be huge if they are productive, energetic, and care. You may end up publishing a ton with them.
There is a method to this madness...
