Implementing peer review at an emergency medicine blog: bridging the gap between educators and clinical experts

Abstract

AbstractEmergency physicians are leaders in the ‘‘free open-access meducation’’ (FOAM) movement. The mandate of FOAM is to create open-access education and knowledge translation resources for trainees and practicing physicians (e.g., blogs, podcasts, and vodcasts). Critics of FOAM have suggested that because such resources can be easily published online without quality control mechanisms, unreviewed FOAM resources may be erroneous or biased. We present a new initiative to incorporate open, expert, peer review into an established academic medical blog. Experts provided either pre- or postpublication reviews that were visible to blog readers. This article outlines the details of this initiative and discusses the potentially transformative impact of this educational innovation.