Higher citation rates of network research publications in Pediatrics education

Objective Publications of medical education research networks have been associated with higher rigor and higher-level outcomes. We sought to determine whether they also receive more citations than comparable papers.Methods We compared citation rates for pediatric education articles published from studies by the Association of Pediatric Program Directors Longitudinal Educational Assessment Research Network (APPD LEARN) with other pediatric education papers, non-pediatric education papers, non-education pediatric papers, and non-education non-pediatric papers, controlling for journal, issue, and numbers of co-authors using a Poisson model.Results We matched 50 APPD LEARN papers with 79 other pediatric education articles, 472 non-pediatric non-education articles, and 200 non-pediatric education articles. APPD LEARN articles had a significantly higher citation rate than other pediatric education articles in the same issues (adjusted incidence rate ratio 1.53, 95% CI 1.37-1.72, pDiscussion Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that network-based medical education papers receive more citations than comparable non-network-based papers.