Genre and Metagenre in Biomedical Research Writing

Abstract

The use of reporting guidelines is an established yet still-evolving practice in the field of biomedicine. These documents are often linked to common methodologies (e.g., randomized clinical trials); they include multiple textual artifacts (e.g., checklists, flow diagrams) and have a history that is coextensive with the emergence and ongoing development of evidence-based medicine (e.g., as an epistemological orientation to research and decision making). Drawing on the concept of metagenre, this article examines how practitioners use reporting guidelines to define and regulate the boundaries of biomedical research and writing activity. The analysis, focusing on one prominent set of guidelines, shows how practitioners use the genre–metagenre dynamic to promote strategic intervention while upholding traditional principles and standards for evidence-based research and communication.

The Discursive Boundary Work of Recontextualizing Science for Policy: Opening the Black Box of an Organization’s Genre System and Intermediary Genre Sets

“…CALM is the accumulated knowledge of CCA staff who have developed and documented the lessons learned from each assessment over the history of the CCA. Wickman (2023) suggests that meta-genres layer on different perspectives and experiences of those using them. In the CCA, this layering happens through those experiences encountered by staff team members using the assessment genre system.…”

“…Meta-genres can provide access to “norms, expectations, and practices” (McNely, 2017, p. 450) that are visible through forms of writing within an activity. They can be layered on by different individuals participating in the same activity over time according to their experiences and understanding (McNely, 2017; Wickman, 2023). In the context of the CCA’s discursive boundary work, meta-genres embody the rhetorical norms, expectations, and practices for recontextualizing science and producing the boundary object of an advisory report.…”