Holly S. Meyer

Beyond Citation Rates: A Real-time Impact Analysis of Health Professions Education Research Using Altmetrics

Purpose To complement traditional citation-based metrics, which take years to accrue and indicate only academic attention, academia has begun considering altmetrics or alternative metrics, which provide timely feedback on an article’s impact by tracking its dissemination via nontraditional outlets, such as blogs and social media, across audiences. This article describes altmetrics and examines altmetrics attention, outlets used, and top article characteristics for health professions education (HPE) research. Method Using Altmetric Explorer, a tool to search altmetrics activity, the authors searched for HPE articles that had at least one altmetrics event (e.g., an article was tweeted or featured in a news story) between 2011 and 2015. Retrieved articles were analyzed using descriptive statistics. In addition, the 10 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores were identified and their key characteristics extracted. Results The authors analyzed 6,265 articles with at least one altmetrics event from 13 journals. Articles appeared in 14 altmetrics outlets. Mendeley (161,470 saves), Twitter (37,537 tweets), and Facebook (1,650 posts) were most popular. The number of HPE articles with altmetrics attention increased 145%, from 539 published in 2011 to 1,321 in 2015. In 2015, 50% or more of the articles in 5 journals received altmetrics attention. Themes for articles with the most altmetrics attention included social media or social networking; three such articles were written as tips or guides. Conclusions Increasing altmetrics attention signals interest in HPE research and the need for further investigation. Knowledge of popular and underused outlets may help investigators strategically share research for broader dissemination.

Making the First Cut: An Analysis of Academic Medicine Editors’ Reasons for Not Sending Manuscripts Out for External Peer Review

Purpose Manuscripts submitted to Academic Medicine (AM) undergo an internal editor review to determine whether they will be sent for external peer review. Increasingly, manuscripts are rejected at this early stage. This study seeks to inform scholars about common reasons for internal editor review rejections, increase transparency of the process, and provide suggestions for improving submissions. Method A mixed-methods approach was used to retrospectively analyze editors’ free-text comments. Descriptive content analysis was performed of editors’ comments for 369 manuscripts submitted between December 2014 and December 2015, and rejected prior to external peer review from AM. Comments were analyzed, categorized, and counted for explicit reasons for rejection. Results Nine categories of rejection reasons were identified: ineffective study question and/or design (338; 92%); suboptimal data collection process (180; 49%); weak discussion and/or conclusions (139; 37%); unimportant or irrelevant topic to the journal’s mission (137; 37%); weak data analysis and/or presentation of results (120; 33%); text difficult to follow, to understand (89; 24%); inadequate or incomplete introduction (67; 18%); other publishing considerations (42; 11%); and issues with scientific conduct (20; 5%). Manuscripts had, on average, three or more reasons for rejection. Conclusions Findings suggest that clear identification of a research question that is addressed by a well-designed study methodology on a topic aligned with the mission of the journal would address many of the problems that lead to rejection through the internal review process. The findings also align with research on external peer review.

Education and the island of misfit toys

Teaching is a core activity for health professionals that pervades our interactions with patients, learners and colleagues and is explicitly outlined as a core competency under the CanMEDS framework. Unfortunately, as Kloek and colleagues point out in this issue of Perspectives on Medical Education [1], teaching is typically assumed to be a skill present in medical graduates and limited education is invested in it. The authors [1] state that ‘training in the medical workforce is not paralleled by the training of their educators in the skills of teaching.’ This is somewhat understandable given how many years are invested in becoming a health professional and pressures on institutions to generate clinical revenues and win grant funding. As a consequence, at many schools (at least in the US) teaching is often assumed to be achievable with any health professional with content expertise (e. g. understanding of medicine). Scholars have studied pedagogical content knowledge – a model aligning educators’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge [2]. The pedagogical content knowledge model has effectively been used in educational settings to reframe individuals’ preconceptions, based on their own experiences about how material should be taught [3]. Indeed, up until relatively recently, being a medical or other health professional educator as a career has been seen as being akin to being on the Island of Misfit Toys. As portrayed in a movie, this is an island where toys with

The Ethics and Etiquette of Research Dissemination

How can I justify multiple publications and/or presentations of the same body of work? What is the difference between “building on previous work” vs. “recycling”? • Creating publications with a family resemblance involves recasting data presentations to address different outcomes of the same study or alternative research questions underlying the study.2 • Always provide attribution to the original presentations. • Contact the journal’s editorial staff or the conference’s program staff to discuss your study’s particular circumstances since journals/ conferences may differ in how they interpret the rules. Their staff members’ insights can help you determine if your findings are inappropriately repetitious.