How to read paper for journal club

  1. One lab member picks the paper that we will all read closely. Send the paper out to everyone on Slack at least a week in advance. Go through the figures and writing briefly to make sure that the paper meets a minimum quality worthy of in-depth reading and discussion.
  2. Everyone should try to read at least 3–4 days in advance of our discussion so that you have time to think and absorb the material, especially if the topic is new to you.
  3. We usually spend a few minutes discussing our general impression of the paper – for example, was the paper interesting, informative, or hard to understand, did you find any related papers that were useful.
  4. The lab member who picked the paper will lead a discussion of the abstract and the first figure.
  5. Other lab members take turns to lead the discussion of each figure, but all lab members should contribute to the discussion of each figure.
  6. Since all of us would have read the paper in detail, we keep our summary of what is shown in each figure to the necessary minimum. Instead, the discussion should focus on:
    1. What is the rationale for the authors to do the experiment or analysis in that figure?
    2. What are the key take home messages from that figure?
    3. Was there something that anyone did not understand?
    4. Does the presented data support the interpretations that the authors state in the abstract or text?
    5. Were there any particularly important or innovative ideas in the experiments or analysis or data presentation in that figure? Think about this question in the context of experiments that you or someone else in our lab is doing.
    6. Would you have done the experiment or presented the data differently than the authors? If so, why?
  7. You should write down brief notes for the above questions besides each figure so that you do not have to re-read the caption or text during our discussion. This is easily done using Okular inline annotations in Ubuntu.
  8. I have found it useful to mark each sentence in the abstract or important sentences in the text with a different color based on the following classification (done easily using Okular annotation tools):
    1. Background
    2. Question
    3. Experiment / Analysis
    4. Result
    5. Claim / Interpretation
    6. Follow up / Useful reference
  9. The above classification helps me to quickly remember the key points of the paper during our discussion or when I come back to it several months or years later.