The grad students I knew were split pretty evenly with respect to their feelings about mandatory journal clubs. Some thought it was extremely helpful. Others....not so much.
Back then, while I had a vague sense that journal club probably had some value, mostly I thought it was a waste of time.
Now, I'm thinking of starting a version of a journal club with my undergraduate researchers. Is that sick or what?
So tell me. Are journal clubs useful? How were yours run?
9 comments:
I think journal clubs are extremely useful for early-level students as a way to learn how to pick apart a paper and that you can't take everything at face value. Discussing a paper in a group is an excellent way for everyone to contribute their own expertise (for example, as the lone biochemist in my program, anytime a figure comes up with CD/FP/crystallography, I am the one who interprets it to everyone and helps explain whether it is useful or junk).
My problem with journal clubs it that they take up so much time, which is extremely valuable as an older student. Now that I'm in my 6th year, I'm much more efficient at deciphering paper and so many of the papers selected for the group have absolutely no relevance to me whatsoever. I can't help but often feel that the two hours spent each week in journal club (plus time reading the paper and preparing for discussion) would be more efficiently put towards doing my actual research (especially since my own lab does a weekly journal review on top of the required program journal club).
Absolutely. As an undergrad they were far more useful than exams. I could not draw all the amino-acid structures for you, but I can still critically read a science paper!
In my experience the best journal clubs are a mixed bag with undergrads, grad-students, postdocs, and faculty all participating. A good rule is to exclude any papers members are personally attached too.
I ran a journal club as a grad student. It involved four related labs and I bullied members into signing up to "present" or lead a discussion on a recent paper of their choosing. Because I was a student the lab PIs helped me by "encouraging" attendance, although it was not mandatory.
The one I go to now is a similar format, only here grad students have to formally enroll and present - postdocs and undergrads fill the gaps. This one also follows a theme..I think!
I wish I had more opportunity to delve into the primarily literature as an undergrad and really think about how science works. Far more useful and fun than trying to memorize pathways to regurgitate on a test and eventually forget!
What's more useful is to start a blog and write nothing but lit posts. Comments are helpful.
I loved my journal club as an undergrad, less so as a grad student, then again as NTT faculty, and now I kinda like it as TT faculty.
What the good experiences had in common: a gregarious leader with a lot of knowledge and a generous spirit, who enjoyed diversions from younger students' questions as much as from the postdocs. And we ALL got something out of those tangents.
What the less-good experiences had in common: grad students complaining about it being useless, no one doing the reading, including the faculty leader. The students who complained would just not show rather than contribute articles that they found interesting. It was very frustrating.
As a senior graduate student, I too have found journal clubs a bit of a waste of time- the reason being that other students would pick random papers that had nothing to do with me, or were not in their area of expertise, or were just crap papers etc.
I fixed this when I started running the journal club by suggesting we chose a paper by that week's seminar speaker on a topic as close as possible to their talk. This way we tend to not to get random weird papers, we have some background and context to prep us to get more out of the seminar, and the seminar speakers tend to do good science, usually on a topic near someone's specialty. This change helped the quality of journal club a lot!
I think JC is useful. We do a lightning round type of deal where everyone gets five minutes to present on a paper. Basically you have to show the pivotal figure or two and tell why this paper is the bomb. If folks like it, they will read it, if they hate it, they only wasted five minutes. Another thing I have done in the past is to take a paper and have to groups debate, one to highlight its strengths and validity and the other group calls it crap and exposes its flaws.
I think they are useful but can take up to much time. Once a month or max every two weeks and journal club would still be useful, but not take up to much time. We alternated journal clubs and lab meeting for a while and that worked well. But I agree, someone will always complain! It's work.
I found reading primary literature extremely valuable as an undergrad. While time consuming, my advisor offered a 1/2 unit seminar class once a year. We read two-three papers a week, and wrote term papers on a topic of interest to us.
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