Editorial Standards

Editorial Standards

PGY Zero publishes residency application guidance for medical students navigating one of the highest-stakes, lowest-transparency processes in professional education. These standards govern how every piece of content on this site is produced, reviewed, sourced, updated, and corrected. They are public because accountability to readers is not optional.

Our Editorial Mission

PGY Zero exists to close the information asymmetry between applicants and the programs that evaluate them. Our editorial commitment is to accurate, actionable, bias-free guidance — written for the full range of applicants, including IMGs, reapplicants, old graduates, and applicants with non-linear training histories. These are not peripheral users. They are the core audience this site was built to serve, and every editorial decision is tested against their needs first.

No program rankings, no pay-to-play content, no sponsored specialty guides. Editorial positions are not for sale and are not influenced by advertising relationships. The guidance we publish reflects our best reading of available evidence, full stop.

Who Creates Our Content

Content is produced by an anonymous collective of US academic physicians across specialties, supplemented by residents and advanced medical students writing under editorial supervision. Authors are identified at the time of writing by training stage and specialty relevance, not by name. This structure protects contributors from institutional blowback while maintaining accountability through the editorial process itself.

Physician contributors disclose their specialty, board status (board-eligible or board-certified), and any institutional affiliations that could bear on the content they are reviewing or authoring. These disclosures are held internally and are part of the conflict-of-interest review described below.

Expert Review Process

Every specialty-specific article is reviewed by at least one board-eligible or board-certified physician in the relevant field before publication. General application process content — ERAS mechanics, NRMP timeline, interview logistics — is reviewed by at least one physician contributor with direct, recent experience in the US GME system.

Review is substantive, not ceremonial. Reviewers are asked to flag unsupported claims, outdated information, missing nuance for non-traditional applicants, and any framing that substitutes institutional gatekeeping language for accurate description. A piece does not publish until review comments are resolved.

How We Research and Source Information

We operate a hierarchy of source trust. At the top: primary regulatory and data sources — ACGME program requirements, NRMP Match data publications, AAMC reports, ECFMG and Intealth official guidance, and peer-reviewed literature in medical education. These are cited by name and linked directly. Where official sources conflict or are ambiguous, we say so explicitly rather than paper over the uncertainty.

Secondary sources — program websites, specialty society statements, GME administrative guidance documents — are used where primary sources are silent, and are labeled accordingly. We do not treat secondary sources as authoritative on regulatory questions.

Community-sourced information (interview reports, reader submissions, program-specific observations) is labeled as such and is never presented as verified institutional data. See the section on reader submissions below.

Claims that cannot be sourced to a primary or credible secondary source are omitted. We do not fill gaps with inference dressed as fact.

Data Currency and Update Schedule

Residency application data changes on an annual cycle tied to the NRMP Match. Every page on PGY Zero carries a Last Reviewed date. Pages containing cycle-sensitive data — timelines, program requirements, exam score policies, visa-relevant information — are reviewed and updated on a schedule aligned with the opening of each application cycle.

Out-of-cycle updates are triggered by any of the following: a material change to ACGME requirements, an NRMP policy announcement, an AAMC data release, a reader-submitted correction that is verified, or identification of a factual error by the editorial team. Pages updated out of cycle carry a visible notice indicating what changed and when.

Pages that have not been reviewed within the current cycle carry a visible staleness notice advising readers to verify data independently before acting on it.

Correction and Retraction Policy

Errors happen. Our policy is to correct them visibly, promptly, and without minimizing what was wrong.

• Reporting: Errors can be reported via the correction submission form linked at the bottom of every article, or by emailing the editorial address listed in the Contact section below.
• Acknowledgment: All correction submissions receive acknowledgment within 48 hours. Acknowledgment is not confirmation that a correction will be made — it is confirmation that review has begun.
• Correction notices: Confirmed factual errors are corrected in the body of the article. A visible correction notice is appended to the page, identifying what was stated, what the correct information is, and when the correction was made. Correction notices are permanent — they are not removed after a subsequent review cycle.
• Retraction: Content is fully retracted when a core claim is found to be unsupportable and correction would require rebuilding the piece from the ground up, or when the piece could cause material harm if left partially corrected. Retracted pages are replaced with a retraction notice rather than deleted, so that links and search results resolve to a transparent explanation rather than a dead page.

Advertising and Sponsorship Independence

PGY Zero carries display advertising. Advertisers do not receive editorial input, content approval, or favorable placement of mentions in articles. Advertising relationships are disclosed in the site footer and on this page.

The following categories of content will not be sponsored under any circumstances:

• Program rankings or favorability lists of any kind
• Step score cutoff guidance or score-to-program matching recommendations
• Interview experience reports or program culture characterizations
• Advice content directed at specific applicant populations (IMGs, reapplicants, etc.) where a sponsor has a commercial interest in that population's decisions

If a conflict between an advertising relationship and an editorial decision arises, the editorial decision governs. Advertisers who require editorial influence as a condition of the relationship are declined.

Affiliate and Commercial Relationships

PGY Zero uses affiliate links for some third-party products and services, including board preparation resources and residency application tools. Affiliate links are labeled at the point of use with a disclosure tag. Affiliate status does not influence editorial evaluation of any product or service. A product we link to affiliately is not editorially endorsed above alternatives simply by virtue of that link.

Where we evaluate or compare tools and resources, the evaluation criteria are defined before affiliate status is considered, and the criteria are disclosed in the article. If the highest-rated option in an evaluation has no affiliate relationship, it is listed as the highest-rated option.

Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest for PGY Zero purposes is any financial, professional, or institutional relationship that could reasonably influence how a contributor writes about or reviews a specific program, vendor, product, or policy position.

All contributors are required to disclose financial relationships with named programs or vendors whose content they are authoring or reviewing. Disclosed conflicts result in one of three outcomes: the contributor is excluded from that specific piece; the conflict is disclosed publicly in the article; or the content is reviewed by an additional editor with no disclosed conflict. The managing editorial team determines which outcome applies based on the nature and materiality of the conflict.

Contributors who fail to disclose a conflict that is subsequently identified are removed from the contributor list and their prior contributions are flagged for independent re-review.

Use of AI in Content Production

AI writing tools are used at PGY Zero in a limited, supervised capacity. Permissible uses include research assistance, identification of structural gaps in draft outlines, and preliminary organization of source material. AI-generated text is not published as final copy. AI-generated citations are not used — all citations are verified by a human editor against the primary source before publication.

Every piece published on PGY Zero has a human author of record responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the final text. That author's training stage and specialty relevance are disclosed as described in the contributor section above.

Reader Submissions and Community Content

PGY Zero collects anonymous program reviews, interview experience reports, and reader-submitted observations about specific programs and application cycles. This content is valuable precisely because it reflects information that does not appear in official sources. It is also unverifiable in ways that official data is not, and we treat it accordingly.

Community-sourced content is:

• Labeled clearly as reader-submitted and distinguished visually from staff-written editorial content
• Reviewed for plausibility before publication — submissions that describe implausible scenarios, contain identifiable personal attacks, or appear designed to harm a specific individual or program without factual grounding are not published
• Never presented as representative data or used to generate rankings or ratings without explicit methodology disclosure
• Retained in anonymized form; PGY Zero does not publish information that could identify an individual submitter

Plausibility review is not the same as verification. Readers are advised to treat community content as one data point in a larger research process, not as confirmed institutional fact.

Linking and Citation Standards

Outbound links on PGY Zero follow these rules:

• Primary sources are linked directly wherever they are publicly accessible without a paywall
• Where a primary source is paywalled, we link to the abstract or a freely accessible summary and note the paywall status; we do not link to unauthorized full-text copies
• Affiliate links are labeled at the point of use, as described above
• Links are audited for breakage on a schedule aligned with the annual review cycle; out-of-cycle link failures reported by readers are corrected within 48 hours of verification
• We do not accept link placement requests from third parties as a condition of coverage or mention

A Note on Visa and ECFMG Content

Pages on PGY Zero that touch on visa pathways, ECFMG certification, or Intealth processes are descriptive only. Requirements in this domain change on regulatory timelines that do not align with the Match cycle, and errors carry high stakes for affected applicants. All such pages carry the following advisory, which reflects our editorial policy and not merely a disclaimer: Verify current requirements directly with ECFMG/Intealth and official sources for your application year.

Contact and Feedback

Corrections, outdated data, missing program information, and editorial feedback can be submitted through the correction form linked at the bottom of each article, or sent to the editorial address listed in the site footer. We read everything submitted. We respond to all correction submissions within 48 hours. We cannot respond individually to general feedback, but it is tracked and informs editorial priority decisions.

If you are a program administrator or GME official who believes content about your program is inaccurate, use the same correction channel. We apply the same standards regardless of who is submitting: if the correction is supported by verifiable evidence, it will be made and noticed. If it is not, it will not.