Open Access Publishing and Resources

FOAMed stands for Free Open Access Medical Education and is a collection of open access medical education resources created to augment traditionally published educational materials such as textbooks and journal articles.  FOAMed materials are often related to emergency medicine and  can be ​ videos, blogs, tweets, podcasts, documents, charts etc.  FOAMed content is created by individuals or groups and may or may not be peer reviewed or accurate.  

As with all open access content, readers should critically evaluate information provided via FOAM.    Some factors to note:

• Is it peer reviewed?

• Are citations and references provided?

• Is the information current?

• Who is providing the information?  

• Does the content appear to be biased or inaccurate?

As FOAM is a relatively new movement,  metrics to evaluate the content are being developed and discussed  within the FOAM community.  Some examples:

•  The #FOAMED Universe – Normal Laws of Evaluation Don't Work Here  by Dr Damian Roland on the Rolobot Rambles Blog.  
• CRAAP  test.