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The medical education (Med Ed) research community characterises itself as drawing on the insights, methods, and knowledge from multiple disciplines and research domains (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Humanities, Psychology). This common view of Med Ed research is echoed and reinforced by the narrative used by leading Med Ed departments and research centres to describe their activities as "interdisciplinary." Bibliometrics offers an effective method of investigating scholarly communication to determine what knowledge is valued, recognized, and utilized. By empirically examining whether knowledge production in Med Ed research draws from multiple disciplines and research areas, or whether it primarily draws on the knowledge generated internally within the field of Med Ed, this article explores whether the characterisation of Med Ed research as interdisciplinary is substantiated. A citation analysis of 1412 references from research articles published in 2017 in the top five Med Ed journals was undertaken. A typology of six knowledge clusters was inductively developed. Findings show that the field of Med Ed research draws predominantly from two knowledge clusters: the Applied Health Research cluster (made of clinical and health services research), which represents 41% of the references, and the Med Ed research cluster, which represents 40% of the references. These two clusters cover 81% of all references in our sample, leaving 19% distributed among the other knowledge clusters (i.e., Education, disciplinary, interdisciplinary and topic centered research). The quasi-hegemonic position held by the Applied Health and Med Ed research clusters confines the other sources of knowledge to a peripheral role within the Med Ed research field. Our findings suggest that the assumption that Med Ed research is an interdisciplinary field is not convincingly supported by empirical data and that the knowledge entering Med Ed comes mostly from the health research domain.

This article critically examines three assumptions underlying recent efforts to advance interdisciplinary research-defined in this article as communication and collaboration between researchers across academic disciplines (e.g. Sociology, Psychology, Biology)--and examines these assumptions' implications for health professions education research (HPER). These assumptions are: (1) disciplines are silos that inhibit the free flowing of knowledge across fields and stifle innovative thinking; (2) interdisciplinary research generates a better understanding of the world as it brings together researchers from various fields of expertise capable of tackling complex problems; and (3) interdisciplinary research reduces fragmentation across groups of researchers by eliminating boundaries. These assumptions are among the new beliefs shaping the contemporary academic arena; they orient academics' and university administrators' decisions toward expanding interdisciplinary research and training, but without solid empirical evidence. This article argues that the field of HPER has largely adopted the premises of interdisciplinary research but has not yet debated the potential effects of organizing around these premises. The authors hope to inspire members of the HPER community to critically examine the ubiquitous discourse promoting interdisciplinarity, and engage in reflection about the future of the field informed by evidence rather than by unsubstantiated assumptions. For example: Should research centres and graduate programs in HPER encourage the development of interdisciplinary or disciplinary-trained researchers? Should training predominantly focus on methods and methodologies or draw more on disciplinary-based knowledge? What is the best route toward increasing the field's profile within academia and attracting the best students and researchers to engage in HPER? These are questions that merit attention at the current juncture as the future of the HPER field relies on decisions made in the present time.

The objective of scientific, or more broadly, academic knowledge is to provide an understanding of the social and natural world that lies beyond common sense and everyday thinking. Academics use an array of techniques, methods and conceptual apparatuses to achieve this goal. The question we explore in this essay is the following: Does the grounded theory approach, in the constructivist version developed by Kathy Charmaz, provide the necessary methodological tools for the creation of knowledge and theories beyond everyday thinking? To conduct our analysis, we have drawn on the rationalist epistemology originally developed by Gaston Bachelard and taken up a few decades later by Pierre Bourdieu and colleagues to look at the epistemological foundation of the CGT methods as defined by Charmaz. We focussed on two distinctive epistemological features characterising constructivist grounded theory (CGT): the use of inductive reasoning to generate interpretative theory; and the primacy of subjectivity over objectivity as the preferred path to knowledge making. While the usefulness of CGT for conducting qualitative research and understanding the perspective of social actors has been acknowledged by scholars in health professions education research and other research areas, the inductivist logic on which it draws raises questions concerning the nature of the knowledge yielded by this approach. As we argue in this article, it is still unclear in what way the interpretative theory generated by CGT is not a duplication of everyday thinking expressed through meta-narratives. It is also unclear how the understanding of social phenomena can be refined if the use of inductive procedures logically implies the creation of a new theory each time a study is conducted. We engage with these questions to broaden the epistemological conversation within the health professions education research community. It is our hope that scholars in the field will engage in this epistemological conversation and advance it in new directions.

This study empirically addresses the claim made by Gibbons et al ("The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies." Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1994) that a novel form of quality control (associated with Mode 2 knowledge production) is supplementing the "traditional" peer-review process (associated with Mode 1 knowledge production). A qualitative design was used to explore faculty members' views on the criteria for assessing scientific research. Ninety-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with biomedical scientists, clinical scientists, and social scientists working in Canadian universities. Results show that the vast majority of participants are aligned with the "traditional" Mode 1 peer-reviewed procedures for assessing research and defining scientific excellence. These participants asserted that peer review is the best quality control mechanism for assessing scientific research, and peer recognition the key attribute for legitimacy in the academic arena. In contrast, participants ascribed a low value to non-academics' judgment of their work. While the study findings do not provide support Gibbons et al.'s claim, they add to a growing body of evidence that supports the continuing importance of peer review in academic career success.

Funding agencies in Canada are attempting to break down the organizational boundaries between disciplines to promote interdisciplinary research and foster the integration of the social sciences into the health research field. This paper explores the extent to which biomedical and clinician scientists' perceptions of social science research operate as a cultural boundary to the inclusion of social scientists into this field. Results indicated that cultural boundaries may impede social scientists' entry into the health research field through three modalities: (1) biomedical and clinician scientists' unfavourable and ambivalent posture towards social science research; (2) their opposition to a resource increase for the social sciences; and (3) clinician scientists procedural assessment criteria for social science. The paper also discusses the merits and limitations of Tom Gieryn's concept of boundary-work for studying social dynamics within the field of science.

Since the latter part of the 1990's, the English-speaking medical education community has been engaged in a debate concerning the types of research that should have priority. To shed light on this debate and to better understand its implications for the practice of research, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with "influential figures" from the community. The results were analyzed using the concept of "field" developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The results reveal that a large majority of these influential figures believe that research in medical education continues to be of insufficient quality despite the progress that has taken place over the past 2 decades. According to this group, studies tend to be both redundant and opportunistic, and researchers tend to have limited understanding of both theory and methodological practice from the social sciences. Three factors were identified by the participants to explain the current problems in research: the working conditions of researchers, budgetary restraints in financing research in medical education, and the conception of research in the medical environment. Two principal means for improving research are presented: intensifying collaboration between PhD's and clinicians, and encouraging the diversification of perspectives brought to bear on research in medical education.

Background: In prior research, we identified and prioritized ten measures to assess research performance that comply with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, a principle adopted worldwide that discourages metrics-based assessment. Given the shift away from assessment based on Journal Impact Factor, we explored potential barriers to implementing and adopting the prioritized measures. Methods: We identified administrators and researchers across six research institutes, conducted telephone interviews with consenting participants, and used qualitative description and inductive content analysis to derive themes. Results: We interviewed 18 participants: 6 administrators (research institute business managers and directors) and 12 researchers (7 on appointment committees) who varied by career stage (2 early, 5 mid, 5 late). Participants appreciated that the measures were similar to those currently in use, comprehensive, relevant across disciplines, and generated using a rigorous process. They also said the reporting template was easy to understand and use. In contrast, a few administrators thought the measures were not relevant across disciplines. A few participants said it would be time-consuming and difficult to prepare narratives when reporting the measures, and several thought that it would be difficult to objectively evaluate researchers from a different discipline without considerable effort to read their work. Strategies viewed as necessary to overcome barriers and support implementation of the measures included high-level endorsement of the measures, an official launch accompanied by a multi-pronged communication strategy, training for both researchers and evaluators, administrative support or automated reporting for researchers, guidance for evaluators, and sharing of approaches across research institutes. Conclusions: While participants identified many strengths of the measures, they also identified a few limitations and offered corresponding strategies to address the barriers that we will apply at our organization. Ongoing work is needed to develop a framework to help evaluators translate the measures into an overall assessment. Given little prior research that identified research assessment measures and strategies to support adoption of those measures, this research may be of interest to other organizations that assess the quality and impact of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim in this commentary is to challenge one of the claims made by interdisciplinarity advocates: that disciplines are silos and, as such, hinder cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange. This claim is a central feature in interdisciplinarity advocates' rationale for promoting structural changes across universities and reallocating resources toward interdisciplinary research units and training programmes. We use citation practices to demonstrate that cross disciplinary communication occurs despite claims otherwise. Considering the overwhelming amount of data generated by bibliometric studies, we argue that knowledge exchange across disciplines is too large to be ignored and that the silo thesis should be re-examined. The longitudinal perspective adopted by bibliometricians also shows that cross-disciplinary communication is far from being a new trend, but to the contrary is a well-established practice among academic communities. We begin our commentary by briefly reviewing three widespread assumptions underpinning pro-interdisciplinary arguments: (1) disciplines' specialization hinders cross-disciplinary communication; (2) disciplines shun away from addressing real world problems; (3) disciplines are self-centred entities primarily competing for academic authority. We conclude our commentary by suggesting that a better understanding of the benefits and limits of interdisciplinarity requires moving away from broad statements about the alleged insularity of disciplines and openness of interdisciplinarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]