Visualization of clinical teaching citations using social network analysis

Background Analyzing the previous research literature in the field of clinical teaching has potential to show the trend and future direction of this field. This study aimed to visualize the co-authorship networks and scientific map of research outputs of clinical teaching and medical education by Social Network Analysis (SNA). Methods We Identified 1229 publications on clinical teaching through a systematic search strategy in the Scopus (Elsevier), Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) and Medline (NCBI/NLM) through PubMed from the year 1980 to 2018.The Ravar PreMap, Netdraw, UCINet and VOSviewer software were used for data visualization and analysis. Results Based on the findings of study the network of clinical teaching was weak in term of cohesion and the density in the co-authorship networks of authors (clustering coefficient (CC): 0.749, density: 0.0238) and collaboration of countries (CC: 0.655, density: 0.176). In regard to centrality measures; the most influential authors in the co-authorship network was Rosenbaum ME, from the USA (0.048). More, the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands have central role in collaboration countries network and has the vertex co-authorship with other that participated in publishing articles in clinical teaching. Analysis of background and affiliation of authors showed that co-authorship between clinical researchers in medicine filed is weak. Nineteen subject clusters were identified in the clinical teaching research network, seven of which were related to the expected competencies of clinical teaching and three related to clinical teaching skills. Conclusions In order to improve the cohesion of the authorship network of clinical teaching, it is essential to improve research collaboration and co-authorship between new researchers and those who have better closeness or geodisk path with others, especially those with the clinical background. To reach to a dense and powerful topology in the knowledge network of this field encouraging policies to be made for international and national collaboration between clinicians and clinical teaching specialists. In addition, humanitarian and clinical reasoning need to be considered in clinical teaching as of new direction in the field from thematic aspects.