Early Impact of the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine CDEM/CORD Special Issue in Educational Research Practice
Introduction In 2015, with a stated goal of disseminating best teaching practices and developing a community of educational scholars, the Council of Emergency Medicine Directors (CORD) and the Clerkship Directors of Emergency Medicine (CDEM) created an annual Special Issue in Educational Research and Practice (Special Issue) in cooperation with the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. The intention of this study was to analyze the impact of this effort to date. Methods Bibliometric data was gathered on all four special issues, 2015 2019, from the Web of Science and then verified with the eScholarship website. Authorship, academic affiliation, date published, article type, and format were tabulated for descriptive analysis. Using metrics from Google Scholar, alternative scholarly impact metrics (altmetrics) and the eScholarship website, the authors identified top articles and grouped them into themes. Results Of the 136 articles included in the first four years of the Special Issue, 126 represented peer reviewed publications with an overall acceptance rate of 25.0% (126/505) Authors from this cohort represented 103 of the 182 (56.6% Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) programs in existence at the time of the inaugural issue. Multi institutional studies represented 34.9% (44/126) of the peer reviewed publications. Traditional and alternative publication metrics are reported to assess the impact of articles from the Special Issues. Conclusion The Special Issue is a proven outlet to share best practices, innovations, and research related to education. Additionally, the infrastructure of this process promotes the development of individual faculty and a community of teaching scholars.
The western journal of emergency medicine