Medical Education Journal Data and Supplemental Files (2000 - 2020)

This is the supplemental data, figures, and tables for The Voices of Medical Education Science: Describing the Landscape. This also includes the author thesaurus and institution thesaurus with supporting read me files. 

Abstract 

Introduction

Medical education has been described as a dynamic and growing field, driven in part by its unique body of scholarship. The voices of authors who publish medical education literature have a powerful impact on the discourses of the community. While there have been numerous studies looking at aspects of this literature, there has been no comprehensive view of recent publications.

Method

The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of all articles published in 24 medical education journals published between 2000-2020 to identify article characteristics, with an emphasis on author gender, geographic location, and institutional affiliation. This study replicates and greatly expands on two previous investigations by examining all articles published in these core medical education journals.  

Results 

The journals published 37,263 articles with the most articles published in 2020 (n=3,957, 10.7%) and least in 2000 (n=711, 1.9%) representing a 456.5% increase. The articles were authored by 139,325 authors of which 62,708 were unique. Men were more prevalent across all authorship positions (n=62,828; 55.7%) than women (n=49,975; 44.3%). Authors listed 154 country affiliations with the United States (n=42,236, 40.4%), United Kingdom (n=12,967, 12.4%), and Canada (n=10,481, 10.0%) most represented. Ninety-three countries (60.4%) were low- or middle-income countries accounting for 9,684 (9.3%) author positions. Few articles were written by multinational teams (n=3,765; 16.2%). Authors listed affiliations with 4,372 unique institutions. Across all author positions, 48,189 authors (46.1%) were affiliated with institutions ranked globally as Top 200 institutions by the Times Higher Education ranking.  

Discussion 

There is a relative imbalance of author voices in medical education. If the field values a diversity of perspectives, there is considerable opportunity for improvement.