Productivity in medical education research: an examination of countries of origin

BACKGROUND: Productivity and countries of origin of publications within the field of medical education research have not been explored. Using bibliometric techniques we conducted an analysis of studies evaluating medical education interventions, examining the country where research originated as well as networks of authors within countries identified as ‘most productive’. METHODS: PubMed was used to search for evaluative studies of medical education. We then examined relative productivity of countries with >100 publications in our sample (number of publications/number of medical schools in country). Author networks from the top 2 countries with the highest relative productivity were constructed. RESULTS: 6874 publications from 18,883 different authors were included. The countries with the highest relative publication productivity were Canada (37.1), Netherlands (28.3), New Zealand (27), the UK (23), and the U.S.A (17.1). Author collaboration networks differed in both numbers of authors and intensity of collaborations in the countries with highest relative productivity. CONCLUSIONS: In terms of the number of publications of evaluative studies in medical education, Canada was the country with the highest relative productivity. Author networks allow for the identification of ongoing and potential new collaborations amongst authors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-014-0243-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.