A number of readers noticed that the June issue of the Journal carried an announcement promoting a live webinar on bioidentical hormones. The live webinar is a new and exciting method of education and communication, but some readers expressed concerns with both the webinar and how it was brought to the attention of the Journal’s readership.

We wish to address these concerns in this editorial, although it must be pointed out that the webinar is not Journal content. The webinar was described by a flyer attached to the front cover of the Journal; in addition, there was an advertisement at the back of the Journal. Some readers interpreted these materials as Journal endorsement of the use of bioidentical hormones. This is not the case.

The Journal does not endorse any particular method of therapy for any condition. Many advertisements for many products (all of them approved by the FDA) appear within the Journal; this appearance does not carry endorsement, and the Journal carries a disclaimer to that effect. The flyer was intended to bring the webinar to the attention of the reader; a live webinar is a relatively new and different type of educational communication for both the Journal and the rest of the publishing industry. Other journals also carry similar front cover flyers for advertising purposes; it was certainly not our intention to imply endorsement. We regret any misinterpretation by our readers.

We now wish to address the concern about the content of the webinar. Webinars have 2 forms, live and archived. The advertised webinar was a live experience; the webinar has now been archived, that is, taped and edited for clarity of speech; dead pauses and all the other events that can occur in a live performance have been eliminated. There is less opportunity for peer review with a live webinar because only the slides are available to editors, and we cannot know how the presentation will evolve, given audience participation, thoughts from the speaker in response, etc. In this case, we reviewed the slides and confirmed that there was no patently false or inaccurate information; we also confirmed that most of the content was developed from peer review journals. However, the type of peer review that we usually give articles could be done only on archived material. Although other journals from other publishers have used live webinars, many journals work only with archived webinars because of this concern. In hindsight, we did not recognize the importance of the difference between a live and archived webinar.

The content of this live webinar was entirely the product of the presenters. The Journal and its editors neither endorse the content nor promote bioidentical hormones over any other therapy. The Journal was a vehicle to present the opportunity to view the webinar. We plan to develop guidelines for hosting other live webinars in the future and, most of all, to refine a peer review system for this new communication technology that will serve our readers better in the future. As always, we are interested in hearing from our readers. Please address your comments to ajog@rrohio.com or perrine@ajog.phxcoxmail.com . And thank you for your continued interest in the “Gray Journal.”