How to Review a Journal Article for Journal Club

Ten Tips for Scientific Journal Clubs: How to Organize, Pb, and Participate Well

What is a journal gild? A scientific journal club is a defended meeting where researchers gather to discuss publications from peer-reviewed journals. These meetings help researchers keep up with current findings, exercise their critical thinking skills, and improve their presentation and fence abilities.

Journal club formats vary depending on the preferences of organizers and participants. Online journal clubs organized using virtual coming together platforms (e.grand. Zoom, Google Meets, Webex) are increasing in popularity with research labs and institutions.

In a well-run journal club, participants engage in lively discussions, while critically and honestly evaluating a report's strengths and weaknesses. They accept away insights on what to practice—and what not to do—in their own work. They feel inspired past new findings and walk abroad with ideas for their own enquiry.

On the contrary, ineffective journal clubs lack active participation. There may be a fear of openly voicing thoughts and opinions, or attendees may only be there for the gratis refreshments. In the end, the attendees take away nothing useful and think it'due south a waste material of time.

Whether you're an organizer or a participant, follow these tips to run and lead a successful journal club, and to create engaging journal club presentations.

ane. Make Information technology a Routine

Schedule the journal social club at a recurring time and location, so that it becomes a regular office of everyone's schedule. Choose a time that will be the least confusing to everyone's experiments. Mayhap host it during lunchtime and invite people to swallow while the presenter is speaking. Or maybe host it in late afternoon with java and snacks provided.

We try and make the meeting times agreeable to most people and at times that are conducive to the piece of work day of a grad educatee. Nosotros concord our journal clubs after seminars or presentations so information technology doesn't interrupt experiments.

Shan Kasal, Graduate Pupil, The University of Chicago

2. Designate a Leader

A designated leader(s) who tin can have ownership of running the periodical social club will contribute tremendously to its success. The responsibilities of a leader may include organizing the journal lodge (see beneath) and facilitating the meeting (e.m., starting and catastrophe meetings on fourth dimension, making speaker introductions and announcements, and moderating discussions).

Skilled periodical order leaders make information technology prophylactic for members to openly voice their thoughts and opinions. They work to generate excitement and encourage agile participation. They also provide opportunities for members to join them in organizing and leading the journal society. Great leaders inspire personal and professional growth in others inside their periodical club community.

Download this journal club preparation checklist to help you stay organized as a leader and ensure all necessary tasks are completed earlier each journal social club coming together.

3. Get Organized

Staying organized is key to running a successful journal club. Hither are some ways that can help you organize a periodical club:

Fix a consistent format and make sure members are aware of it.
Create and share schedules so participants know information technology's their turn to present, facilitate, pre-read, or provide refreshments.
Develop a communication rhythm to make sure announcements and reminders are sent out in a timely manner.
Provide guidelines and/or a template for presenters.
Bring attendance sheets to track member turnouts. Depending on the institute, keeping rail of omnipresence can help with budget requests and approvals.
Provide feedback forms to the audition to help identify areas for improvement.

Journal Club Toolkit

Journal Lodge ToolKit

Get organized with these downloadable tools, including a periodical club preparation checklist, omnipresence canvass template, presentation checklist, feedback form template, and presenter evaluation forms.

four. Pre-Read Papers

Pre-reading is a neat way to ensure that you have sufficient background information to participate in journal club discussions. In an platonic earth, anybody in the journal gild volition read the newspaper prior to the coming together. Simply due to the loftier demands of inquiry, members may non have the time to pre-read before every single coming together.

Journal gild leaders can encourage pre-reading or even make it mandatory. Some periodical clubs ask for different members to present different figures. Using this format, several individuals have to pre-read the paper and actively participate during each meeting. Other journal clubs designate i or two individuals, in add-on to the presenter, to thoroughly pre-read the paper each week. The pre-readers are asked to help promote discussion by asking questions during the meetings. Organizers can set a schedule so that members know when it's their plough to pre-read.

5. Build a Community

You lot need to have students that are interested in the gild in the first place, and I would also say, interested in hanging out with each other. Our journal society format is informal, which allows the states to at to the lowest degree enjoy the company of each other.

Shan Kasal, Graduate Student, The Academy of Chicago

Periodical social club organizers and leaders should aim to create a customs where the members feel condom enough to share their thoughts and ask questions. Fostering customs encourages active participation and the exchange of ideas, and can increase participant satisfaction and collaborations.

Successful journal clubs e'er come with food!!

Serena Chang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford University

A peachy style to foster community is, simply, to serve food and drinks. Eating and drinking together can create a friendly, breezy temper conducive to open discussions, which will help encourage the flow of ideas and thoughts on the journal order newspaper. In addition, refreshments help to incentivize members to proceed attention the journal club.

6. Choose Relevant Papers

Consider the composition of your periodical club community when choosing a newspaper. A journal club may take a broad grouping of researchers (e.g., a general immunology journal social club), or it may simply involve one or two labs specifically working on immune tolerance or a particular immune cell type. Papers discussed should be exist on topics relevant to the participants' research areas and so that they remain interested.

Nosotros encourage people to select papers they are not already reading to try and expand our agreement of immunology and theirs. Likewise many times I feel like people select papers they already accept read or will read and gain nothing from it, then in that location is no incentive to invest more than.

Shan Kasal, Graduate Student, The Academy of Chicago

Every bit a busy researcher, the additional job of preparing for a journal club can feel like an extra burden. It's easy to cull a paper that you are already reading for your research project. But choosing a newspaper that is exterior of your research specialty can assist you and others gain new perspectives and broaden your knowledge.

7. Make Engaging Presentations

You've likely suffered through boring lectures with text-heavy slides, or a monotonous presentation. How tin this be avoided in your periodical club?

I have a ane page suggestion list of things to include in the presentation, including criticisms for the methods, hypothesis, whether the results are valid/strong enough to support the hypothesis, etc. This helps keep everyone on track.

Serena Chang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford University

As a journal society organizer or leader, you can provide presenters with a suggested listing of presentation content and best practices:

Start with why. Capture everyone's interest past sharing why you chose that paper or why the paper is important to discuss.
Prepare a concise presentation. Summarize simply the fundamental points of the paper. Include enough background information but avoid the urge to include every unmarried detail. You lot tin provide technical details when needed during the word period.
Simplify complex information. Create simple visual representations of complex ideas, pathways, or techniques to aid your audience understand the information. Avert writing out circuitous data in text-heavy slides that nobody will read.
Give information technology more space. Make your slides easier to read by fugitive having as well much text in small fonts or too many figures on one slide. If a figure is likewise large, you can break it up into a few slides.
Include word starters. Instead of just summarizing, include your thoughts and opinions on all aspects of the newspaper to initiate a discussion. What were the strengths and weaknesses? What questions did you have when reading the newspaper?

eight. Keep It Exciting

Suspension out of the routine once in a while to keep the journal social club fresh and exciting. For instance, you could invite external speakers to your journal lodge:

Invite a visiting scientist to nowadays their piece of work.
Ask a biotech company to present their technologies.
Find a speaker who tin can discuss scientific careers.
Enquire a science communication expert to requite tips.

nine. Look for Ways to Improve

You've taken the first step towards improving your journal guild past reading this article, but improvement is a continual process.

What does your journal order community call back? Perform regular audits of the journal society by asking for feedback every few months. Distribute feedback forms that attendees can fill out at the terminate of a journal order meeting.

Download a journal club feedback form template >

In addition to asking for feedback, pay attention to what happens during journal gild meetings. Practise members generally appear awake and engaged during presentations? Are y'all constantly running out of give-and-take time? You can gain a lot of insights past just existence observant in the meeting.

ten. Make Time for It

Understandably, the demands of research tin can prevent you from making the choice to take on this boosted task of leading or participating in a periodical club. Prefer smart practices and so y'all can utilise your fourth dimension more efficiently. Working smart will help free up your time for other beneficial activities, including periodical clubs.

One of the ways to piece of work smarter is to make the switch to more efficient technologies that can aid you get your results in less fourth dimension. For example, you lot can switch to a smarter way to isolate cells.

Scientist working in the lab

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Source: https://www.stemcell.com/efficient-research/journal-club