Background Within medical education research, issues of equity, absence, and marginalization of diverse perspectives are becoming a growing area of scholarly focus. One area of absence that has been under-explored is that of published voices from low- and middle-income countries and non-English speaking scholars. Bibliometric analyses are one way to identify absences. We undertook a bibliometric analysis of five top medical education journals to determine which countries were represented in prestigious first and last authorship positions. Methods Web of Science was searched for all articles and reviews that were published between 2012 and 2018 within Academic Medicine, Medical Education, Advances in Health Sciences Education, Medical Teacher, and BMC Medical Education. Country of origin was identified for the first and last author of each publication, and the number of publications originating from each country were counted. Results Our analysis revealed a dominance of first and last authors from five countries: USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Australia. Authors from these five countries had first or last authored 74% of publications. Of the 195 countries in the world, 53% were not represented by a single publication. Journals varied in their inclusion of authors from outside of these five dominant countries, with BMC Medical Education including more geographic diversity than other journals. There was a slight increase in the percentage of publications from outside of these five countries, from 22% in 2012 to 29% in 2018. Conclusions The dominance of wealthy nations within spaces that claim to be international is a finding that requires attention. As a bibliometric analysis, we were unable to unearth the reasons behind this dominance. However, we draw upon analogies from modern Olympic sport and our own collaborative research process to show how academic publishing continues to be a colonized space that advantages those from wealthy and English-speaking countries.

Cynthia Whitehead is the holder of the BMO Financial Group Chair in Health Professions Education Research at University Health Network. No other authors have any competing interests to declare.

This study did not receive any funding.

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