Heritage College leads nation with most-cited osteopathic medical education research article

A recent bibliometric analysis examining the most highly cited research articles in osteopathic medical education has identified the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine as home to the field’s most-cited publication.

Bibliometric analysis is a research method used to evaluate publication output and citation patterns within a specific discipline. In this study, researchers assessed osteopathic medical education scholarship by reviewing articles published between 1975 and 2020. Using the Web of Science Core Collection database, along with supplemental hand searches, they identified and analyzed the 100 most-cited articles in the field.

The findings revealed that the Heritage College and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine were tied for having the greatest number of top cited publications with 15 articles each in the top 100.

The most-cited article overall was coauthored by Zak Kelm, D.O., a 2018 graduate of the Heritage College, along with James Womer, Jennifer K. Walter and Chris Feudtner. Titled “Interventions to Cultivate Physician Empathy: A Systematic Review,” the article was published in “BMC Medical Education” in 2014 and has been cited 107 times—more than any other osteopathic medical education article identified in the analysis.

The Heritage College’s second-highest cited article, ranking 11th overall, is “Faculty Mentors for Medical Students: A Critical Review,” authored by M.P. Mann and published in “Medical Teacher” in 1992.

The complete results of the bibliometric analysis are available in “Medical Reference Service Quarterly.”