How to run a journal club?

[Evergrey]

A few other (MD) students and I are trying to get a journal club off the ground for our department. It has fallen upon me to choose the first article and lead discussion. I was hoping my more research-competent MD/PhD brethren could help me figure out what I am supposed to do! We expect ~10 medical students to attend, along with several of the research faculty (PhDs) and perhaps an attending or two. I won't lie -- I'm a bit intimidated to be planning and leading the first session, especially considering I have never actually been in a journal club before. This is something we would like to establish in perpetuity.

I am doing translational/basic science research currently and would like to choose a high-impact article in the field I am working in. Any suggestions for what criteria I should use to select it (i.e. should it be a review, a clinical trial, or a no-nonsense basic science publication? How long and detailed should it be?) And the most important question: how should I go about preparing to present it?

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[StIGMA]

Pick a research article, not a review. It can be from whatever field, but pick something that would be expected based on the type of journal club (don't pick a biophysics paper for a group of clinicians).

Have a few slides of background information that briefly explains what is necessary to understand the subject matter (and research methods if they are non-standard). Explain what the 'question' was the authors addressed and why it is important. Graphical images are nice tools if you can find them from review articles or google images.

Then get into the data. Take a few high resolution images from the paper itself- either a whole figure or a panel of a figure (eg: Figure 1A). You can either write a brief summary of the figure on the slide (above, to the side, or under the figure) or simply talk about it. Label the figure, and title the slide something informative about the figure (eg: what the authors used in their figure legend). You can use the screenshot tool in adobe to take images- do this on a zoomed-in image (400%) so it shows up well on a large screen. You can emphasize certain data with arrows or with a laser pointer.

Do this for all the figures that you wish to discuss. You do not need to discuss every figure if you find it unnecessary or if the paper is unbearably long. It may be helpful to include supplemental figure images if they are pertinent to interpreting the results. If you do not understand a figure, don't talk about it or simply state what the authors said about the data (better yet, try harder to understand it). You do not need to present the data in the same order that the paper did.

Then give the summary of the paper and suggest how the paper impacts the field/medicine. You can include future/new research questions about the research that may be figured out in the near future. Aim for 25-40 or so slides total. Leave time for discussion during or after the presentation. Shorter is better- no-one wants to be in journal club for 2 hours.

Good luck.