journal club presentation guidelines

Journal Club Presentation: Tips and How To Prepare To Present

Preparing for a journal club presentation can be a daunting task, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding experience.

In this guide, you’ll find essential tips on how to choose the right article, organize your presentation, and engage your audience effectively.

From understanding the methods and results to delivering a compelling discussion, this article will provide you with the tools you need to present confidently and make a meaningful contribution to your journal club.

What Is A Journal Club?

A journal club is a platform where you, along with fellow scientists, clinicians, and students , gather to discuss a chosen paper.

The purpose is to critically analyse and appraise a primary research article. In a typical journal club presentation, you start with the introduction, giving your audience the background information and the hypothesis the article addresses.

This sets the context and ensures everyone understands the scope of the study. You can find journal clubs in:

• universities,
• hospitals, and
• research institutions.

Many professional organizations also host journal clubs, both in-person and online, offering a platform for continuous learning and professional development.

When you prepare for a journal club, choose an article relevant to your subject area and consider your audience. Are they clinicians or basic scientists? This impacts how you present the data and the depth of explanation required. 

How To Present In Journal Clubs?

Presenting in a journal club is an art that combines preparation, organisation, and clear communication. Here’s a step-by-step process to ensure your journal club presentation is engaging and insightful.

Choosing the Article

Start by selecting a primary research article, not a review. A primary article allows you to discuss the methods, results, and discussion sections in depth.

Choose a paper that interests you and is relevant to your subject area. Consult with your supervisor to ensure the chosen paper is suitable for your audience, whether they are clinicians or basic scientists.

For example, a study using mouse model study may work for scientists, but might not be ideal for a clinical audience.

Prepare Your Paper Presentation

Read the paper multiple times to understand its core concepts and findings. As you read, highlight key points and make notes. Explore supplementary materials and related articles to get a comprehensive view of the topic.

This background information is crucial for providing context during your presentation. If the article contains a lot of experimental data, ensure you understand the methods and results thoroughly.

You also want to check your references here, in case your audience wants to know more about where you get your facts and findings.

Organise Your Presentation

A well-structured presentation is critical. Organise your slides into clear sections:

• introduction,
• results, and
• discussion.

Start with the introduction, providing background information and stating the hypothesis. This sets the stage for your audience. Use a summary slide to outline the main points you’ll cover.

Introduction

In the introduction, discuss the study’s aim and why it’s important. Provide a brief overview of the background and previous research. 

This helps your audience and colleagues understand the context and significance of the study. Relate the topic to broader scientific questions or clinical problems. This also serves as a starting point, to ensure their expectation is aligning to what you plan to talk to them about.

Spend the most time on the methods section. Discuss the:

• experimental design,
• study population, and
• data collection techniques. 

Address questions like, “Does the study design answer the research question?” and “Who is the study population?” Highlight any inclusion or exclusion criteria.

Discuss potential biases and how the authors attempted to mitigate them. Understanding the methods is crucial for assessing the validity of the results.

When presenting the results, consider to describe the sample and present the data clearly. Use figures and tables from the article but avoid overcrowding your slides. 

Instead, split complex diagrams and annotate them to highlight key points. Discuss the results from both the figures and the main text, explaining their significance. 

Look at confidence intervals and p-values to assess the statistical significance of the findings.

However, as much as you want to let your audience know how detailed your study is, remember not to share in too much detail, you could confuse, or worse bore them.

Discussion, Summary & Conclusion

In the discussion section, explore how the study’s findings relate to previous research. Do other studies support or contradict these results? Discuss the implications of the findings and what they mean for the field.

 Acknowledge the limitations of the study, such as sample size or methodological constraints. This section is your chance to critically appraise the article and provide a balanced view.

Engaging Your Audience

Keep your audience engaged by making the presentation interactive. Anticipate questions they might have and address them during your talk. Encourage feedback and discussion.

This makes the session more dynamic and informative, where you interact and exchange information and opinion with your audience. 

Tips To Present In Journal Club Presentation

Mastering a journal club presentation involves thorough preparation, clear organization, and engaging delivery.

By choosing a relevant article, understanding its content deeply, and structuring your presentation effectively, you can confidently share your insights and foster valuable discussions.

Remember to anticipate questions and involve your audience to keep the session dynamic. With these tips, you’ll be well-equipped to present compellingly and contribute to the collective learning and professional development of your peers.

For more tips on how to present effectively, check out my video:

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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Expert Consult

Journal Club: How to Build One and Why

By Michelle Sharp, MD; Hunter Young, MD, MHS

Published April 6, 2022

Journal clubs are a longstanding tradition in residency training, dating back to William Osler in 1875. The original goal of the journal club in Osler’s day was to share expensive texts and to review literature as a group. Over time, the goals of journal clubs have evolved to include discussion and review of current literature and development of skills for evaluating medical literature. The ultimate goal of a journal club is to improve patient care by incorporating evidence into practice.

Why are journal clubs important?

In 2004, Alper et al . reported that it would take more than 600 hours per month to stay current with the medical literature. That leaves residents with less than 5 hours a day to eat, sleep, and care for patients if they want to stay current, and it’s simply impossible. Journal clubs offer the opportunity for residents to review the literature and stay current. Furthermore, Lee et al . showed that journal clubs improve residents’ critical appraisal of the literature.

How do you get started?

The first step to starting a journal club is to decide on the initial goal. A good initial goal is to lay the foundation for critical thinking skills using literature that is interesting to residents. An introductory lecture series or primer on study design is a valuable way to start the journal club experience. The goal of the primer is not for each resident to become a statistician, but rather to lay the foundation for understanding basic study designs and the strengths and weaknesses of each design.

The next step is to decide on the time, frequency, and duration of the journal club. This depends on the size of your residency program and leadership support. Our journal club at Johns Hopkins is scheduled monthly during the lunch hour instead of a noon conference lecture. It is essential to pick a time when most residents in your program will be available to attend and a frequency that is sustainable.

How do you get residents to come?

Generally, if you feed them, they will come. In a cross-sectional analysis of journal clubs in U.S. internal medicine residencies, Sidorov found that providing food was associated with long-lasting journal clubs. Factors associated with higher resident attendance were fewer house staff, mandatory attendance, formal teaching, and an independent journal club (separate from faculty journal clubs).

The design or format of your journal club is also a key factor for attendance. Not all residents will have time during each rotation to read the assigned article, but you want to encourage these residents to attend nonetheless. One way to engage all residents is to assign one or two residents to lead each journal club, with the goal of assigning every resident at least one journal club during the year. If possible, pick residents who are on lighter rotations, so they have more time outside of clinical duties to dissect the article. To enhance engagement, allow the assigned residents to pick an article on a topic that they find interesting.

Faculty leadership should collaborate with residents on article selection and dissection and preparation of the presentation. Start each journal club with a 10- to 20-minute presentation by the assigned residents to describe the article (as detailed below) to help residents who did not have time to read the article to participate.

What are the nuts and bolts of a journal club?

To prepare a successful journal club presentation, it helps for the structure of the presentation to mirror the structure of the article as follows:

Background: Start by briefly describing the background of the study, prior literature, and the question the paper was intended to address.

Methods: Review the paper’s methods, emphasizing the study design, analysis, and other key points that address the validity and generalizability of the results (e.g., participant selection, treatment of potential confounders, and other issues that are specific to each study design).

Results: Discuss the results, focusing on the paper’s tables and figures.

Discussion: Restate the research question, summarize the key findings, and focus on factors that can affect the validity of the findings. What are potential biases, confounders, and other issues that affect the validity or generalizability of the findings to clinical practice? The study results should also be discussed in the context of prior literature and current clinical practice. Addressing the questions that remain unanswered and potential next steps can also be useful.

Faculty participation: At our institution, the faculty sponsor meets with the assigned residents to address their questions about the paper and guide the development of the presentation, ensuring that the key points are addressed. Faculty sponsors also attend the journal club to answer questions, emphasize key elements of the paper, and facilitate the open discussion after the resident’s presentation.

How do you measure impact?

One way to evaluate your journal club is to assess the evidence-based practice skills of the residents before and after the implementation of the journal club with a tool such as the Berlin questionnaire — a validated 15-question survey that assesses evidence-based practice skills. You can also conduct a resident satisfaction survey to evaluate the residents’ perception of the implementation of the journal club and areas for improvement. Finally, you can develop a rubric for evaluation of the resident presenters in each journal club session, and allow faculty to provide feedback on critical assessment of the literature and presentation skills.

Journal clubs are a great tradition in medical training and continue to be a valued educational resource. Set your goal. Consider starting with a primer on study design. Engage and empower residents to be part of the journal club. Enlist faculty involvement for guidance and mentorship. Measure the impact.

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• 10 Journal Club Tips: How to Run, Lead, and Present Like a Pro

Ten Tips for Scientific Journal Clubs: How to Organize, Lead, and Participate Well

What is a journal club? A scientific journal club is a dedicated meeting where researchers gather to discuss publications from peer-reviewed journals. These meetings help researchers keep up with current findings, exercise their critical thinking skills, and improve their presentation and debate abilities.

Journal club formats vary depending on the preferences of organizers and participants. Online journal clubs organized using virtual meeting platforms (e.g. Zoom, Google Meets, Webex) are increasing in popularity with research labs and institutions.

In a well-run journal club, participants engage in lively discussions, while critically and honestly evaluating a study's strengths and weaknesses. They take away insights on what to do—and what not to do—in their own work. They feel inspired by new findings and walk away with ideas for their own research. On the contrary, ineffective journal clubs lack active participation. There may be a fear of openly voicing thoughts and opinions, or attendees may just be there for the free refreshments. In the end, the attendees take away nothing useful and think it's a waste of time. Whether you’re an organizer or a participant, follow these tips to run and lead a successful journal club, and to create engaging journal club presentations.

1. Make It a Routine

Schedule the journal club at a recurring time and location, so that it becomes a regular part of everyone's schedule. Choose a time that will be the least disruptive to everyone's experiments. Perhaps host it during lunchtime and invite people to eat while the presenter is speaking. Or perhaps host it in late afternoon with coffee and snacks provided.

We try and make the meeting times agreeable to most people and at times that are conducive to the work day of a grad student. We hold our journal clubs after seminars or presentations so it doesn’t interrupt experiments.

Shan Kasal, Graduate Student, The University of Chicago

2. Designate a Leader

A designated leader(s) who can take ownership of running the journal club will contribute tremendously to its success. The responsibilities of a leader may include organizing the journal club (see below) and facilitating the meeting (e.g., starting and ending meetings on time, making speaker introductions and announcements, and moderating discussions). Skilled journal club leaders make it safe for members to openly voice their thoughts and opinions. They work to generate excitement and encourage active participation. They also provide opportunities for members to join them in organizing and leading the journal club. Great leaders inspire personal and professional growth in others within their journal club community. Download this journal club preparation checklist to help you stay organized as a leader and ensure all necessary tasks are completed before each journal club meeting.

3. Get Organized

Staying organized is key to running a successful journal club. Here are some ways that can help you organize a journal club:

• Set a consistent format and make sure members are aware of it.
• Create and share schedules so participants know it's their turn to present, facilitate, pre-read, or provide refreshments.
• Develop a communication rhythm to make sure announcements and reminders are sent out in a timely manner.
• Provide guidelines and/or a template for presenters.
• Bring attendance sheets to track member turnouts. Depending on the institute, keeping track of attendance can help with budget requests and approvals.
• Provide feedback forms to the audience to help identify areas for improvement.

Journal Club ToolKit

Get organized with these downloadable tools, including a journal club preparation checklist, attendance sheet template, presentation checklist, feedback form template, and presenter evaluation forms.

4. Pre-Read Papers

Pre-reading is a great way to ensure that you have sufficient background information to participate in journal club discussions. In an ideal world, everyone in the journal club will read the paper prior to the meeting. But due to the high demands of research , members may not have the time to pre-read before every single meeting. Journal club leaders can encourage pre-reading or even make it mandatory. Some journal clubs ask for different members to present different figures. Using this format, several individuals have to pre-read the paper and actively participate during each meeting. Other journal clubs designate one or two individuals, in addition to the presenter, to thoroughly pre-read the paper each week. The pre-readers are asked to help promote discussion by asking questions during the meetings. Organizers can set a schedule so that members know when it's their turn to pre-read.

5. Build a Community

You need to have students that are interested in the club in the first place, and I would also say, interested in hanging out with each other. Our journal club format is informal, which allows us to at least enjoy the company of each other.

Journal club organizers and leaders should aim to create a community where the members feel safe enough to share their thoughts and ask questions. Fostering community encourages active participation and the exchange of ideas, and can increase participant satisfaction and collaborations.

Successful journal clubs always come with food!!

Serena Chang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford University

A great way to foster community is, simply, to serve food and drinks. Eating and drinking together can create a friendly, informal atmosphere conducive to open discussions, which will help encourage the flow of ideas and thoughts on the journal club paper. In addition, refreshments help to incentivize members to continue attending the journal club.

Immunology Journal Club Sponsorship Contest

Enter for a chance to win a $500 USD sponsorship budget for your immunology journal club. Use it to fund food and drinks. Be a hero and win it for your journal club community.

6. Choose Relevant Papers

Consider the composition of your journal club community when choosing a paper. A journal club may have a broad group of researchers (e.g., a general immunology journal club), or it may only involve one or two labs specifically working on immune tolerance or a particular immune cell type. Papers discussed should be be on topics relevant to the participants’ research areas so that they remain interested.

We encourage people to select papers they are not already reading to try and expand our understanding of immunology and theirs. Too many times I feel like people select papers they already have read or will read and gain nothing from it, so there is no incentive to invest more.

As a busy researcher, the additional task of preparing for a journal club can feel like an extra burden. It’s easy to choose a paper that you are already reading for your research project. But choosing a paper that is outside of your research specialty can help you and others gain new perspectives and broaden your knowledge.

7. Make Engaging Presentations

You’ve likely suffered through boring lectures with text-heavy slides, or a monotonous presentation. How can this be avoided in your journal club?

I have a one page suggestion list of things to include in the presentation, including criticisms for the methods, hypothesis, whether the results are valid/strong enough to support the hypothesis, etc. This helps keep everyone on track.

As a journal club organizer or leader, you can provide presenters with a suggested list of presentation content and best practices:

• Start with why. Capture everyone’s interest by sharing why you chose that paper or why the paper is important to discuss.
• Prepare a concise presentation. Summarize only the key points of the paper. Include enough background information but avoid the urge to include every single detail. You can provide technical details when needed during the discussion period.
• Simplify complex information. Create simple visual representations of complex ideas, pathways, or techniques to help your audience understand the information. Avoid writing out complex information in text-heavy slides that nobody will read.
• Give it more space. Make your slides easier to read by avoiding having too much text in small fonts or too many figures on one slide. If a figure is too large, you can break it up into a few slides.
• Include discussion starters. Instead of simply summarizing, include your thoughts and opinions on all aspects of the paper to initiate a discussion. What were the strengths and weaknesses? What questions did you have when reading the paper?

Download this journal club presentation checklist to help your presentation preparation.

8. Keep It Exciting

Break out of the routine once in a while to keep the journal club fresh and exciting. For example, you could invite external speakers to your journal club:

• Invite a visiting scientist to present their work.
• Ask a biotech company to present their technologies.
• Find a speaker who can discuss scientific careers.
• Ask a science communication expert to give tips.

9. Look for Ways to Improve

You’ve taken the first step towards improving your journal club by reading this article, but improvement is a continual process. What does your journal club community think? Perform regular audits of the journal club by asking for feedback every few months. Distribute feedback forms that attendees can fill out at the end of a journal club meeting. Download a journal club feedback form template > In addition to asking for feedback, pay attention to what happens during journal club meetings. Do members generally appear awake and engaged during presentations? Are you constantly running out of discussion time? You can gain a lot of insights by simply being observant in the meeting.

10. Make Time for It

Understandably, the demands of research can prevent you from making the choice to take on this additional task of leading or participating in a journal club. Adopt smart practices so you can use your time more efficiently. Working smart will help free up your time for other beneficial activities, including journal clubs. One of the ways to work smarter is to make the switch to more efficient technologies that can help you get your results in less time. For example, you can switch to a smarter way to isolate cells.

Efficient Tools and Technologies for Life Science Research

Accomplish more in less time and with less effort by making smarter choices for the tools you use in the lab, including cell isolation and cell culture technologies.

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