1) New Section: Works-in-Progress.  Medical education research related to COVID-19

The CMEJ will be publishing works-in-progress for medical education studies that are related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation is changing fast; the responses of medical education organizations and learners to the spread of COVID-19 are rapid and often dramatic. The medical education community needs to better coordinate and collaborate immediately. Publishing works-in-progress is one way that the CMEJ can bring medical education researchers, leaders, and learners together now.

We hope that by publishing these works-in-progress, by better informing us of the promising research that is being conducted across Canada and the world, we will provide several advantages and benefits. We hope this initiative will help generate productive partnerships, stimulate in-depth thinking both about methodologies and topics, lead to more rigorous studies through external peer review, reduce duplication, allow us to support valuable data collection, and give us the luxury of anticipating the eventual findings.

Each submission must meet these inclusion criteria:

• REB (or IRB or equivalent) approval (where possible) or
• In the event where REB approval is not needed, data collection begun by the time of publication
• Formal or informal^a internal scientific peer review.
• A statement to the editors indicating how these criteria have been met
• Under 600 words

^a Informal peer review includes a review from any qualified person outside of the author team. This might include a colleague or research coordinator or faculty mentor or supervisor. If you are not sure, please contact an editor with the CMEJ.

Submissions must include these elements:

• Introduction
  • situating the study in the context of previous research within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • outlining the research questions
  • describing the need for the study and intended outcomes (not necessarily the findings but how the study may affect medical education)
• Methods (Fitting the type of study; see guidelines for authors)
  • Describing the methods selected to gather and analyze data
  • Outlining the extent to which the investigators are willing to consider various forms of collaboration from other researchers at other sites
• Summary
  • Brief overview of context, questions, methods, and implications

In most cases, authors should give approximately equal weight to the Introduction and the Methods. There may be good reason for authors to emphasize one section or the other. Authors are free to set those proportions based on how they want to communicate their study to the public.

Publishing works in progress does not impose upon the CMEJ any commitment or expectation, tacit or implicit, that the completed work will be published. If the studies are completed and submitted to the CMEJ each one will be subject to a rigorous peer review process, the same as for any other submission to a similar section of our journal. The corollary is also true: the authors are not obligated or expected to submit their completed work to the CMEJ. They are free to submit their papers to any section in any journal of their choice.

2) A forum of ideas for COVID-19 related medical education research and collaborator contacts on the CMEJ website.

This is a simple mechanism to bring those with shared interests together, combine resources, avoid duplication of effort, and manage the impact on students and educators.

Find the page here with view only permission: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S2J4tJ67XlPBfnv2YiRXmLuA6mQKQWCf_-T3EgrbQB4/edit?usp=sharing

Use this form to add data to the forum: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16oqJHufdmB_ncn6UaB05Z4ymFJIUf-qELXT7JKIq1Q8/viewform?ts=5e8df1ab&edit_requested=true

If you need to edit or modify data already entered and moved to the sheet, please contact cmej.copyediting@usask.ca and we will make the necessary changes.

3) Special Issue on COVID-19 related medical education research

The CMEJ is announcing a special issue on COVID-19 related articles and will soon be sending out a call for papers. Stay tuned; more to come.

4) COVID-19 related CMEJ Blogs

The COVID-19 pandemic and pubic health measures implemented to curb the spread (flatten the curve) and protect us all from exploding and fatal levels of infection have been very disruptive. This has led to unprecedented innovation but also considerable suffering from death of friends and relatives to minor inconveniences such as restrictions on non-essential movements and our favourite recreational activities.

The lives and careers of medical students, residents, faculty, and staff have been affected in many ways and to different degrees. If you are willing and able to write about your medical education related experiences but need a medium to get your ideas out to a wide audience, consider submitting your essays to the CMEJ blog through our normal submission process. Blogs will not be subject to a full peer review process. One or more of our editors will work with authors to polish the blog post before being published on-line. Due to the time-sensitive nature of these posts, we will try to expedite their processing.