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.

中文翻译：

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医学教育研究中的跨学科：神话与现实

医学教育 (Med Ed) 研究界的特点是利用来自多个学科和研究领域（例如社会学、人类学、教育、人文科学、心理学）的见解、方法和知识。这种对 Med Ed 研究的普遍看法得到了领先 Med Ed 部门和研究中心将其活动描述为“跨学科”的叙述的呼应和强化。文献计量学提供了一种调查学术交流的有效方法，以确定哪些知识被重视、认可和利用。通过实证检验 Med Ed 研究中的知识生产是否来自多个学科和研究领域，或者它是否主要利用 Med Ed 领域内部产生的知识，本文探讨了 Med Ed 研究作为跨学科研究的特征是否得到证实。对 2017 年发表在前五名 Med Ed 期刊上的研究文章中的 1412 篇参考文献进行了引文分析。归纳开发了六个知识集群的类型。调查结果表明，Med Ed 研究领域主要来自两个知识集群：应用健康研究集群（由临床和健康服务研究组成），占参考文献的 41%，以及 Med Ed 研究集群，占 40%的参考文献。这两个集群覆盖了我们样本中所有参考文献的 81%，剩下 19% 分布在其他知识集群（即教育、学科、跨学科和以主题为中心的研究）中。Applied Health 和 Med Ed 研究集群所持有的准霸权地位将其他知识来源限制在 Med Ed 研究领域内的外围角色。我们的研究结果表明，Med Ed 研究是一个跨学科领域的假设并没有得到实证数据的令人信服的支持，而且进入 Med Ed 的知识主要来自健康研究领域。