Authors from Brazil, Colombia, India, Japan, and the United States contribute to this issue’s collection of papers.  The themes are equally diverse: interprofessional education and collaborative care, family medicine curriculum. longitudinal integrated curriculum, education of dietitians, mental health, health equity, leadership education, conference success factors, and blended learning in dental education.  Themes and nationalities converge as researchers explore new ways to teach and assess learners and to investigate those methods to look for evidence of effectiveness.

Unfortunately, many of the submissions we receive provide limited evidence of impact. We encourage authors to look beyond learner’s reaction to innovations (Kirkpatrick Level 1) and assess change in knowledge or skill (Kirkpatrick Level 2) or change in behavior (Level 3).  These are significantly harder to evaluate but provide more meaningful information about the effect of an innovation.

We encourage our readers to respond to papers with their own critical insights in the form of letters to the editor and follow up studies.  When extending research in a domain previously presented, authors should emphasize what makes their context or profession unique so that their work is not simply a replication.  Sometimes this is a matter of feasibility – educators in country X are resistant to try an innovation used in other parts of the world because they perceive that added costs do not exceed benefits.  Providing evidence for costs and benefits of a known innovation in that context can be very useful.  However, a clear argument needs to be presented for why the context merits a new study of that innovation.  Notably, most resistance to change comes from an argument made solely based on cost with benefit an afterthought.

Finally, a word about word counts.  The American writer Mark Twain wrote, “I apologize for such a long letter.  I didn’t have time to write a short one.”  TLDR is the retort of busy people – too long, didn’t read.  We have word limits for reasons of cost (our variable costs are copyediting and HTML conversion) and also because the most effective papers make their points concisely.  Enough said.