STFM LAUNCHES A NEW JOURNAL FOCUSED ON FAMILY MEDICINE EDUCATION: “PEER-REVIEWED REPORTS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION RESEARCH” (PRIMER)

Doing and publishing research in family medicine has been a chronic challenge for both learners and faculty, new and old. On the one hand, the “bar for entry” may be quite high for someone who has never initiated their own research or who has never been mentored through the finer points of academic publishing, especially if they are located at an institution without a distinct research focus.¹ Additionally, family medicine research has not traditionally been well-funded, and there is a dearth of training available for burgeoning researchers within the discipline.^2–5

On the other hand, requirements for scholarship are increasing in the context of residency training. Additionally, as family medicine matures as both a specialty and a discipline (the latter constituting practicing family physicians, as well as aspiring learners, and non-physician faculty who work in the context of family medicine departments or programs), the need to approach research questions from the unique perspective of family medicine has become acute.^6,7

One particular area in which family medicine scholars have shown a great deal of interest is in conducting research and rigorous evaluation around their educational and workforce development projects.⁸ Of course, the journal Family Medicine has grown into the go-to place for publishing family medicine-related educational research, and there are a host of other journals devoted more generally to the topic of medical education. The gap between doing a research project which might be presented at a conference, however, and moving forward to publish the results of that research in a peer-reviewed journal, remains large.⁹

In response to these needs, the Society for Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) has launched a new online-only journal, Peer-reviewed Reports in Medical Education Research (PRiMER). The journal aims to publish short reports (1,000 words or less) focused on medical education or related topics (eg, primary care workforce policy). PRiMER will serve as the online journal of the STFM Resource Library.

The primary purpose for PRiMER is to serve as a bridge between the presentation of research results at conferences (such as those hosted by STFM or the North American Primary Care Research Group [NAPCRG]), and the development of full-length articles that would be suitable for submission to traditional print journals, such as Family Medicine. Submitted manuscripts may evolve from recent conference presentations, or may be based upon studies or projects that are smaller in scope, exploratory, confirmatory, or in an early stage of development (eg, pilot studies). The focus will explicitly be upon studies of medical education that are relevant to primary care.

The goals of PRiMER are to:

• Provide an outlet for the scholarly exchange of new knowledge and educational innovations that would otherwise not be disseminated after a conference presentation

• Facilitate scholarly productivity and writing skills development of early-stage scholars, including researchers, residents, students, and clinical faculty focused on teaching and educational practice

• Engage and develop early-stage scholars as manuscript reviewers under the guidance of the editorial team

Through PRiMER, we hope to simultaneously provide a step between conference presentation and print publication for new scholars, as well as to open up a new possibility for smaller studies, negative results, or papers that would otherwise face challenges in getting published, helping alleviate the noted “file drawer problem” that exists in many fields.^10,11

The PRiMER journal is now accepting submissions. Author instructions and further information is available at http://www.stfm.org/NewsJournals/PRiMER. We hope to see PRiMER join other ventures, such as the CASFM Educational Research Alliance (CERA) survey series,¹² the Grant Generating Project (GGP),¹³ and the emerging ADFM-NAPCRG research capacity task force,¹⁴ in furthering the development of the family medicine research enterprise going forward.

• © 2016 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.