The state of the blog: the first year of eAJKD.

Just over a year ago, AJKD launched an official blog, eAJKD (www.eajkd.org). The impetus was to provide a platform that could be more flexible, interactive, accessible, and nimble than the online repository of articles available at the journal’s website, www.ajkd.org. This was a substantial and novel undertaking, as at the time, no nephrology journals had blogs and, even today, only 9% of general internal medicine journals with an impact factor greater than 4.0 operate blogs. As we begin our second full year of blog operations, we look back at the goals that motivated us and anticipate the future of this growing venture. When the opportunity arose to create and launch eAJKD, we jumped at the chance to lend our expertise as both nephrologists and bloggers. The majority of our team already had experience contributing to nephrology blogs and using Twitter and other social media. At the same time, we were keen to leverage the extensive experience of the AJKD editorial team in review and management of content. Merging these two mindsets, we developed a blogging workflow that involves coordinated review of all posts by both the Blog Editor (Dr Jhaveri) and the journal’s Education Editor (Dr Scott Gilbert). This process helped us focus on quality and educational value as the overarching goals for the blog. In first developing the mission for eAJKD, we determined that a central aim would be to produce posts that enriched journal content by providing a more personal, interactive way for readers to engage with articles. As a result, a key component of the blog is interviews with authors of selected AJKD articles. Most of these are provided in written Q&A format, but we have also taken advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the blog to post audio and video interviews. In each interview we conduct, we tailor openended questions to give authors the opportunity to discuss their article and research in depth. We have been gratified that so many authors have accepted our invitation to participate and to share their research beyond the confines of the printed page. We have enjoyed the opportunity to meet the people behind the research, and to help bring readers closer to authors. In addition to interviews, we strive to post a variety of content, including timely commentaries, interactive teaching tools, and meeting coverage. While the editorials that appear in each issue of the print journal typically provide detailed analysis of Original Investigations, blog commentaries offer perspectives on a wider range of AJKD content, often appearing as soon as the article is published online. In addition, the blog