Explosion of research

I was preparing a talk on research in health sciences education. I wanted to know how research productivity has grown in recent years. After some amateuristic and failed attempts on my part trying to search the literature, I contacted one of our PhD students who is a librarian.

He amazed me by returning data within a few hours. The virtue of having expertise is clear. From that data I made the following graph.

As you see, the growth is exponential. Particularly the last 10 years, there is a dramatic increase, with nearly 3000 publications per year. There is no way we can read this anymore. What will happen next? Will this growth continue? It is hard to imagine. These publications appear in 27 current journals in the field. 27! I think there is no other domain, that provides such scholarly attention to education. It is clear that our health sciences research domain is thriving. Now let’s use that knowledge in actual educational practice!

Acknowledgement: I am very grateful to Joseph Nicholson, New York University, Health Sciences Library

Cees van der Vleuten