- Does your lab do a journal club?
- How often is said journal club?
- How often have you already read the paper that is being sent out for journal club?
My answers:
- Yes.
- The new schedule is once a week. I think this is grossly too often.
- In my entire scientific life, there has been only one instance where I have received the "Paper for Journal Club" email and said, "Oh, I read this already." Does that mean I don't read enough papers? Or that journal club selections are often esoteric and unlikely to to be widely read outside of an individual scientist?
1. Yes.
ReplyDelete2. Once a week during the academic year.
3. This depends enormously on the topic of the journal club and whether it is a single lab or multiple labs. Over the last few years (here and postdoc) it has not been unusual for me to receive a paper I have reviewed, let alone read, but I have been in other JCs where every paper is new.
1. Yes.
ReplyDelete2. Weekly.
3. This happens more and more when you're the PI with newbie trainees.
1. yes
ReplyDelete2. every 2 weeks
3. it's happened, but rarely.
1. Not currently
ReplyDelete2. used to be weekly
3. Happens more with time; I saw it as a good thing as it meant that I was being exposed to the broader literature.
in my old lab, yes. Two different ones, one larger (people interested in a bigger topic) and one smaller (only the lab). None of them had power points though, only old fashioned OverHeads and/or whiteboard to encourage shorter summaries and impact description of the paper for the group who then talked about use for them...
ReplyDeleteOnce every 2 weeks for each, i.e. every week I had one.
Did happen sometimes but only in the smaller group since that was my subtopic group.
1. Yes
ReplyDelete2. Once a week
3. Sometimes, but only because the whole purpose has been to prep me for comps. After I'm done, we will be expanding the topic coverage to start prepping the new student
Once a week?? Seriously?? Am I the only one who thinks that once a week is a heck of a lot of journal club?
ReplyDeleteHow often do you folks have lab meeting, then?
How often do you folks have lab meeting, then?
ReplyDeleteOnce a week.
1. Yes
ReplyDelete2. Every other week (alternates with lab meeting)
3. Frequently I have perused it but JC makes me actually read it them in detail.
I even think EOW is a bit much since our field doesn't move fast enough to have high quality papers out that often. We end up reading a lot of crap or stuff that is OT.
We just switched to a weekly format (previously once/month), and I'm skeptical. In the old format, we'd read a lot of papers about [disease of interest] and many different associated pathologies. The new format was designed to be specifically about [pathway of interest]. With the increased frequency & restricted topic area, I think we're going to end up like how you said, LabMom, with a lot of crap papers and marginally related stuff.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm missing the point, but I have yet to find journal club a valuable exercise. What am I supposed to be getting out of it (short of reading one additional paper a week)?
We converted from a once a week thing where everybody read the paper to once a month where we each pick a paper and have 5 minutes to present key points as sort of a way to "sell" your paper to everyone else to read. And we all get a list of citations for all the papers presented that day. It seems to be working really well when we do these lightning round journal clubs as compared to the old style.
ReplyDeleteGR, I kinda like that idea.
ReplyDeleteWe do JC once a week and lab meeting once a week where we alternate between a group meeting and individual meetings from week to week. For a while we were doing lab meeting every two weeks, but I found that to be a little too long at times.
1. Yes
ReplyDelete2. Only for 10 weeks each summer, once per week.
3. Rarely.
1. Yes
ReplyDelete2. Every other week
3. We do something similar to what Genomic Repairman describes, so that doesn't really apply.
Your mileage may vary, but journal club done correctly (especially for less experienced readers) can help a great deal with reading critically. This is especially true when you can work with colleagues with a greater depth of understanding in the subtopic or useful outside knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI've found our lab's journal clubs to be very helpful in dissecting both the data (is this the best experimental/statistical approach? is it not only significant, but meaningful?) and the narrative (does the approach reflect our current understanding of the system? do the authors' conclusions reasonably agree/disagree with these models? can the data from the experimental system be reasonably extrapolated to physiological\"real-world" function?).
Reading a paper and assimilating the authors' conclusions is easy. Critically integrating the data presented into one's own understanding is hard. Sometimes bad papers make for excellent journal clubs, serving as concrete examples of the necessity of critical reading.
@DGT: A big selling point of JCs is to help n00bs learn how to read a paper critically. As well as immerse them in the field.
ReplyDelete1. not anymore, but yes,
2. weekly usually, sometimes fortnightly
3. Sometimes, but I worked in a very broad field and there were lots of interested groups. It wasn't unusual to be in JC and not have a fucking clue what was being talked about, and waiting for the one figure that had an ephys experiment (e.g.) to get close so I finally had something to say :)