Localitis

Many are interested in engaging in medical education research. Within our courses or within my travels I frequently work with starting educational researchers. Many of these starting researchers suffer from a disease called “localitis”.

Within their educational practice, these novice researchers are doing something innovative and they wish to publish about that. A clear symptom of the disease is that the name of the context where the research is done appears in the title or in the introduction of the paper that is being written. If your introduction starts with “At the university of X we adopted this new approach to….”, then be sure to expect a rejection from the journals. The reason is that the evidence you wish to publish needs to have relevance for the wider world. Why is what you bring to the table relevant to any other education setting in the world? By mentioning the context in the title or in the introduction you limit the scope of your paper.

The cure for the disease is simple. Try and write a title and an introduction without even mentioning the context. Start from a general problem, discuss the literature, identify a gap in that literature and then formulate your research questions. It is in the Method section of your paper that the context is identified, for example under the heading “Setting”. Naturally there are exceptions to this rule. This is particularly true if the context has a scientific meaning in relation to the evidence brought forward.

In the past I have been involved in studying PBL in different cultures. I have also been involved in studying communication in non-Western settings. Or, more recently, I have been involved in studying self-directed learning in a Japanese context. In all these cases the context matters for the scientific question being posed. If this is not the case, then don’t sell yourself short with “localizing” your paper. Cure yourself from the disease and you will note your papers find an easier way into the literature.