Uniformed Services, University of the Health Sciences in, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Med Educ. 2022 Apr;56(4):387-394. doi: 10.1111/medu.14677. Epub 2021 Nov 2.
BACKGROUND: The field of medical education remains poorly delineated such that there is no broad consensus of articles or journals that comprise 'the field'. This lack of consensus indicates a missed opportunity for researchers to generate insights about the field that could facilitate conducting bibliometric studies and other research designs (e.g., systematic reviews) and also enable individuals to identify themselves as 'medical education researchers'. Other fields have utilised bibliometric field delineation, which is the assigning of articles or journals to a certain field in an effort to define that field. PROCESS: In this Research Approach, three bibliometric field delineation approaches-information retrieval, core journals, and journal co-citation-are introduced. For each approach, the authors describe attempts to apply it in medical education and identify related strengths and weaknesses. Based on co-citation, the authors propose the Medical Education Journal List 24 (MEJ-24), as a starting point for delineating medical education and invite the community to collaborate on improving and potentially expanding this list. PEARLS: As a research approach, field delineation is complicated, and there is no clear best way to delineate the field of medical education. However, recent advances in information science provide potentially fruitful approaches to deal with the field's complexity. When considering these approaches, researchers should consider collaborating with bibliometricians. Bibliometric approaches rely on available metadata for articles and journals, which necessitates that researchers examine the metadata prior to analysis to understand its strengths and weaknesses, and to assess how this might affect data interpretation. While using bibliometric approaches for field delineation is valuable, it is important to remember that these techniques are only as good as the research team's interpretation of the data, which suggests that an expanded approach is needed to better delineate medical education, an approach that includes active discussion within the medical education community.
背景:医学教育领域的划分仍不够明确,因此没有广泛共识认为哪些文章或期刊属于该领域。这种缺乏共识表明,研究人员错失了一个产生有关该领域见解的机会,而这些见解可以促进开展文献计量学研究和其他研究设计(例如系统评价),并使个人能够将自己确定为“医学教育研究人员”。其他领域已经利用了文献计量学领域划分,即将文章或期刊分配给特定领域,以定义该领域。
过程:在这种研究方法中,引入了三种文献计量学领域划分方法——信息检索、核心期刊和期刊共被引。对于每种方法,作者都描述了在医学教育中尝试应用该方法的尝试,并确定了相关的优缺点。基于共被引,作者提出了《医学教育期刊列表 24》(MEJ-24),作为医学教育领域划分的起点,并邀请社区共同合作来改进和可能扩展该列表。
要点:作为一种研究方法,领域划分很复杂,没有明确的最佳方法来划分医学教育领域。然而,信息科学的最新进展为处理该领域的复杂性提供了潜在的富有成效的方法。在考虑这些方法时,研究人员应考虑与文献计量学家合作。文献计量学方法依赖于文章和期刊的可用元数据,这要求研究人员在分析之前检查元数据,以了解其优缺点,并评估这可能如何影响数据解释。虽然使用文献计量学方法进行领域划分是有价值的,但重要的是要记住,这些技术的准确性取决于研究团队对数据的解释,这表明需要一种更广泛的方法来更好地划分医学教育领域,该方法包括在医学教育界内进行积极的讨论。
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