Our Process
- Each month, our editors review over 100 journals, looking for articles that meet our criteria for relevance and validity. Major journals are cross-checked by multiple editors. We also have a team of volunteers who regularly review a single journal looking for POEMs, and they communicate their "finds" to the responsible editor.
- Each article is critically appraised for relevance and validity. For articles that meet both criteria, first drafts are written by the editors.
- The first draft of the POEM is sent to all of the editors, as well as to our editorial board.
- Each editor reads every POEM and critiques them.
- The editorial board critically appraises all of the original articles selected for review, and sends back comments to the editors. The editors revise their POEMs based on this critique.
- The final POEMs are edited for clarity, completeness, and style, and assigned a level of evidence.
- The POEMs are then added to the Essential Evidence Plus database and distributed as Daily POEMs Alerts.
A Note About Data
The numbers don't add up all the time. Daily POEMs are designed to be a synopsis, not a complete abstract. For these synopses we extract only the most important information. We generally don't report non-significant results (the actual numbers) or other information that is typically not of interest. This is why each review is supported by a Level of Evidence (LOE) indicator, allowing the reader to discern an overall sense of how well this new information is supported.
The Bottom Line
The most important nuggets are detailed in the Bottom Line, with additional information in the body of the Synopsis. Our research has shown that most people read the Bottom Line first and then the synopsis, but only if they are interested in knowing the details. In the Bottom Line, we occasionally refer to other studies and pull this particular study into context with other evidence so that users are aware of related existing studies.