FOAM authorship: Who's teaching our learners?

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Digital Health
• Open Access Publishing

Background:

• Free open-access medical education (FOAM) is popular but lacks traditional peer review.
• Concerns exist regarding the accuracy, quality, and bias of FOAM content.
• Limited research has described the characteristics of FOAM authors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the authorship demographics of popular Free open-access medical education (FOAM) resources.
• To identify characteristics such as gender, conflicts of interest, and practice type among FOAM authors.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional analysis of 12 months of content from the top 25 FOAM blogs (August 2020-2021).
• Data collected included number of posts, author gender, conflicts of interest (COI) statements, and practice type (academic, community, hybrid).

Main Results:

• 1001 authors contributed 2141 posts, with over half from six major websites.
• The majority of content (78.5%) lacked a COI statement.
• Authors were predominantly academic (89%), held MD degrees (67.4%), were men (59.7%), and resided in North America (US, Canada).

Conclusions:

• Top FOAM blogs are dominated by North American, male, academic authors with MD degrees.
• The current authorship pool may limit the diversity of perspectives in medical education.
• Encouraging a more diverse authorship could enhance the value of the FOAM educational experience.