Journal club
A journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly (in person, online, or both) to critically evaluate recent articles in the academic literature, such as the scientific literature, medical literature, or philosophy literature. Journal clubs are usually organized around a defined subject in basic or applied research. For example, the application of evidence-based medicine to some area of medical practice can be facilitated by a journal club. Typically, each participant can voice their view relating to several questions such as the appropriateness of the research design, the statistics employed, the appropriateness of the controls that were used, etc. There might be an attempt to synthesize together the results of several papers, even if some of these results might first appear to contradict each other. Even if the results of the study are seen as valid, there might be a discussion of how useful the results are and if these results might lead to new research or to new applications.
Journal clubs are sometimes used in the education of graduate or professional students. These help make the student(s) become more familiar with the advanced literature in their new field of study. In addition, these journal clubs help improve the students' skills of understanding and debating current topics of active interest in their field. This type of journal club may sometimes be taken for credit. Research laboratories may also organize journal clubs for all researchers in the lab to help them keep up with the literature produced by others who work in their field.
Online journal clubs
Journal clubs continue to adapt to new technology and methods of communication. Recently journal clubs have begun to take advantage of Twitter allowing geographically diverse groups to participate in a single discussion. The first Twitter Journal club was an Allergy Journal Club run by Dr. Ves Dimoz in 2008. They used Twitter to document the discussion of coverage of a traditional in-person Journal club. This journal club established the use of hashtags to organize journal club comments.[1][2]
Web applications
The website www.benty-fields.com provides a framework to organize journal clubs including daily paper updates. This website currently only works for arXiv based fields like physics, mathematics, statistics and computer science, but will be extended to the medical science soon.
Wiki-based
WikEM and emergency medicine based wiki powered by MediaWiki provides a journal club that occurs asyncronously during an entire month. Wikijournalclub.com provides a similar service for all medical specialties. iForumRx.org is a community of practice for ambulatory care pharmacy specialists featuring an asynchronous journal club.
Twitter-enhanced
The first group to run a journal club primarily on Twitter was The Twitter Journal Club started by Natalie Silvey and Fi Douglas in May 2011.[3][4] The original Twitter Journal Club appears to have gone offline. Since then there have been a number of additional Twitter journal clubs:
| Name | Date | Twitter ID | Hashtag | Active / Inactive (date of last chat) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Twitter Journal Club | May 2011 | @twitjournalclub | #twitjc | Inactive (12/13) |
| Public Health Twitter Journal Club | August 2011 | @PHTwitJC | #PHTwitJC | Inactive (8/13) |
| British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Journal Club | May 2012 | @BlueJCHost | #bluejc | Active |
| Microbiology Twitter Journal Club | May 2012 | @microtwjc | #microtwjc | Inactive (1/16) |
| St Emyn's Journal Club | October 2012 | @JC_StE | #JC_StE | Inactive (9/14) |
| Urology Journal Club | November 2012 | @iurojc | #urojc | Active |
| Evidence Based Nursing Twitter Journal Club | January 2013 | @EBNursingBMJ | #ebnjc | Active |
| Hospice and Palliative Care medicine | February 2013 | @hpmjc | #hpmjc | Active |
| Archives of Disease in Childhood's Journal Club | June 2013 | @ADC_JC | #ADC_JC | Inactive (4/16) |
| Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Journal Club | October 2013 | @respandsleepjc | #rsjc | Active |
| Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Journal Club | November 2013 | @M_Lin | #ALiEMJC | Inactive (3/15) |
| General Surgery Journal Club | February 2014 | @igsjc | #igsjc | Inactive (2/16) |
| Primary Care Medicine Journal Club | February 2014 | @pcmjc | #pcmjc | Inactive (3/14) |
| Allergy Journal Club | March 2014 | @allergyjc | #allergyjc | Inactive (3/14) |
| Nephrology Journal Club | April 2014 | @nephjc | #nephjc | Active |
| iForumRx Online Journal Club | May 2014 | @iforumrx | #iforumrx | Active |
| Radiation Oncology | August 2014 | @rad_nation | #radonc | Active |
| Geriatric Medicine Journal Club | August 2014 | @GeriMedJC | #GeriMedJC | Active |
| International Psychiatric Journal Club | December 2014 | @PsychiatryJC | #PsychJC | Inactive (6/15) |
| Duke Anesthesiology Journal Club | January 2015 | @Duke_Anesthesia | #AnesJC | Active |
| Rheumatology Journal Club | February 2015 | @RheumJC | #RheumJC | Active |
| Amyloidosis Journal Club | October 2015 | @Amyloid_Planet | #amyloidosisJC | Inactive (3/16) |
| GIM Journal Club (General Internal Medicine) | December 2015 | @GIMJClub | #GenMedJC | Active |
| General Practice Journal Club | January 2016 | @GPjournalclub | #GPJC | Active |
| Pathology Journal Club | July 2016 | @PathJC | #PathJC | Active |
| Family Medicine Online Journal Club | September 2016 | @FamilyMedJC | #FamilyMedJC | Active |
| International Pediatric Nephrology Journal Club | November 2016 | @IPNA_PedNeph | #IPNAJJC | Active |
History
The earliest references to a journal club was found in a book of memoirs and letters by the late Sir James Paget, a British surgeon, who describes a group at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in the mid-19th century as "a kind of club ... a small room over a baker's shop near the Hospital-gate where we could sit and read the journals."[5]
Sir William Osler established the first formalized journal club at McGill University in Montreal in 1875. The original purpose of Osler's journal club was "for the purchase and distribution of periodicals to which he could ill afford to subscribe."[6]
Tinsley Harrison, the famous creator of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine hosted a journal club at his house twice a month where one member of the group would present a research paper and the others would criticize it.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ "The First Journal Club on Twitter - Then and Now". 6/8/11. Retrieved 2014-11-27. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ "Use of Social Media for Education".
- ↑ "Researchers tweet technical talk". Nature.com. 2011-06-20. Retrieved 2014-11-26.
- ↑ "Twitter Journal Club: yet another ‘revolution’ in scientific communication?". BMJ Blogs. 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2014-06-27.
- ↑ Esisi, Martina. "Journal clubs." BMJ Careers. 13 October 2007. Web. 9 January 2010. <http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=2631#ref2>.
- ↑ Milbrandt EB, Vincent JL (2004). "Evidence-based medicine journal club". Crit Care. 8: 401–2. PMC 1065082
. PMID 15566599. doi:10.1186/cc3005. - ↑ pittman, james (2011-08-25). "Tinsley Randolph Harrison - The founding editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine". DoctorsHangout.com.
Further reading
- Dayton, A. I. (2006). "Beyond open access: open discourse, the next great equalizer". Retrovirology. 3 (1): 55. PMC 1569436 . PMID 17007632. doi:10.1186/1742-4690-3-55.