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How to Prepare an Outstanding Journal Club Presentation

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Rishi Sawhney; How to Prepare an Outstanding Journal Club Presentation. The Hematologist 2006; 3 (1): No Pagination Specified. doi: https://doi.org/10.1182/hem.V3.1.1308

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Dr. Sawhney is a member of the ASH Trainee Council and a Fellow at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Journal club presentations provide a forum through which hematology trainees keep abreast of new developments in hematology and engage in informal discussion and interaction. Furthermore, honing presentation skills and mastering the ability to critically appraise the evidence add to our armamentarium as clinicians. Outlined here is a systematic approach to preparing a journal club presentation, with emphasis on key elements of the talk and references for electronic resources. Use of these tools and techniques will contribute to the success of your presentation.

I. ARTICLE SELECTION:

The foundation of an outstanding journal club presentation rests on the choice of an interesting and well-written paper for discussion. Several resources are available to help you select important and timely research, including the American College of Physicians (ACP) Journal Club and the Diffusion section of The Hematologist . McMaster University has created the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORE) system to identify the highest-quality published research. In fact, the ACP Journal Club uses the MORE system to select their articles 1 . Specific inclusion criteria have been delineated in order to distinguish papers with the highest scientific merit 2 . Articles that have passed this screening are then rated by clinicians on their clinical relevance and newsworthiness, using a graded scale 3 . With the help of your mentors and colleagues, you can use these criteria and the rating scale as informal guidelines to ensure that your chosen article merits presentation.

II. ARTICLE PRESENTATION:

Study Background: This section provides your audience with the necessary information and context for a thoughtful and critical evaluation of the article's significance. The goals are 1) to describe the rationale for and clinical relevance of the study question, and 2) to highlight the preclinical and clinical research that led to the current trial. Review the papers referenced in the study's "Background" section as well as previous work by the study's authors. It also may be helpful to discuss data supporting the current standard of care against which the study intervention is being measured.

Study Methodology and Results: Clearly describe the study population, including inclusion/exclusion criteria. A diagrammatic schema is easy to construct using PowerPoint software and will help to clearly illustrate treatment arms in complex trials. Explain the statistical methods, obtaining assistance from a statistician if needed. Take this opportunity to verbally and graphically highlight key results from the study, with plans to expand on their significance later in your presentation.

Author's Discussion: Present the authors' conclusions and their perspective on the study results, including explanations of inconsistent or unexpected results. Consider whether the conclusions drawn are supported by the data presented.

III. ARTICLE CRITIQUE:

This component of your presentation will define the success of your journal club. A useful and widely accepted approach to this analysis has been published in JAMA's series "User's guide to the medical literature." The Centre for Health Evidence in Canada has made the complete full-text set of these user's guides available online 4 . This site offers review guidelines for a menu of article types, and it is an excellent, comprehensive resource to focus your study critique. A practical, user-friendly approach to literature evaluation that includes a worksheet is also available on the ASH Web site for your use 5 .

While a comprehensive discussion of scientific literature appraisal is beyond the scope of this discussion, several helpful tips warrant mention here. In assessing the validity of the study, it is important to assess for potential sources of bias, including the funding sources and authors' affiliations. It is also helpful to look for accompanying editorial commentary, which can provide a unique perspective on the article and highlight controversial issues. You should plan to discuss the trade-offs between potential benefits of the study intervention versus potential risks and the cost. By utilizing the concept of number needed to treat (NNT), one can assess the true impact of the study intervention on clinical practice. Furthermore, by incorporating the incidence rates of clinically significant toxicities with the financial costs into the NNT, you can generate a rather sophisticated analysis of the study's impact on practice.

IV. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS:

Restate the authors' take-home message followed by your own interpretation of the study. Provide a personal perspective, detailing why you find this paper interesting or important. Then, look forward and use this opportunity to "think outside the box." Do you envision these study results changing the landscape of clinical practice or redirecting research in this field? If so, how? In articles about therapy, future directions may include moving the therapy up to first-line setting, assessing the drug in combination regimens or other disease states, or developing same-class novel compounds in the pipeline. Searching for related clinical trials on the NIH Web site 6  can prove helpful, as can consultation with an expert in this field.

Good journal club discussions are integral to the educational experience of hematology trainees. Following the above approach, while utilizing the resources available, will lay the groundwork for an outstanding presentation.

WEB BASED REFERENCES

www.acpjc.org

hiru.mcmaster.ca/more/InclusionCriteria.htm

hiru.mcmaster.ca/more/RatingFormSample.htm

www.cche.net/main.asp

www.hematology.org/Trainees

www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials

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Journal Club: How to Prepare Effectively and Smash Your Presentation

Journal club. It’s so much more than orally dictating a paper to your peers.

It’s an opportunity to get a bunch of intelligent people in one place to share ideas. It’s a means to expand the scientific vocabulary of you and the audience. It’s a way to stimulate inventive research design.

But there are so many ways it can go wrong.

Poorly explained papers dictated blandly to an unengaged audience. Confusing heaps of data shoehorned into long presentations. Everybody stood awkwardly outside a meeting room you thought would be free.

Whether you are unsure what journal club is, are thinking of starting one, or simply want to up your presentation game—you’ve landed on the ultimate journal club guide.

The whats, the whys, and the hows, all in one place.

What Is a Journal Club in Science?

A journal club is a series of meetings in which somebody is elected to present a research paper, its methods, and findings to a group of colleagues.

The broad goal is to stimulate discussion and ideas that the attendees may apply to their own work. Alternatively, someone may choose a paper because it’s particularly impactful or ingenious.

Usually, the presenter alternates per a rota, and attendance may be optional or compulsory.

The presenter is expected to choose, analyze, and present the paper to the attendees with accompanying slides.

The presentation is then followed by a discussion of the paper by the attendees. This is usually in the form of a series of questions and answers directed toward the presenter. Ergo , the presenter is expected to know and understand the paper and subject area to a moderate extent.

Why Have a Journal Club?

I get it. You’re a busy person. There’s a difficult research problem standing between you and your next tenure.

Why bother spending the time and energy participating in a series of meetings that don’t get you closer to achieving your scientific goals?

The answer: journal club does get you closer to achieving your scientific goals!

But it does this in indirect ways that subtly make you a better scientist. For example:

• It probably takes you out of your comfort zone.
• It makes you a better communicator.
• It makes you better at analyzing data.
• It improves your ability to critique research.
• It makes you survey relevant literature.
• It exposes you and your audience to new concepts.
• It exposes your audience to relevant literature.
• It improves the reading habits of you and your audience.
• It gets clever people talking to each other.
• It gives people a break from practical science.

It also provides a platform for people to share ideas based on their collective scientific experience. And every participant has a unique set of skills. So every participant has the potential to provide valuable insight.

This is what a good journal club should illicit.

Think of journal club as reading a book. It’s going to enrich you and add beneficially to the sum of your mental furniture, but you won’t know how until you’ve read it.

Need empirical evidence to convince you? Okay!

In 1988 a group of medical interns was split into two groups. One received journal club teaching and the other received a series of seminars. Approximately 86% of the journal club group reported improved reading habits. This compares to 0% in the group who received seminar-based teaching. [1]

Journal Club Template Structure

So now you know what journal club is, you might wonder, “how is it organized and structured?”

That’s what the rest of this article delves into. If you’re in a rush and need to head back to the lab, here’s a graphical summary (Figure 1).

Nobody likes meetings that flounder around and run over time. And while I have no data to prove it, I reckon people take less away from such meetings. Here’s a basic journal club template that assumes you are the presenter.

Introduce the Paper, Topic, Journal, and Authors

Let your audience know what you will be talking about before diving right in. Remember that repetition (of the important bits) can be a good thing.

Introducing the journal in which the paper is published will give your audience a rough idea of the prestige of the work.

And introducing the authors and their respective institutes gives your audience the option of stowing this information away and following it up with further reading in their own time.

Provide a Reason Why You Chose the Paper

Have the authors managed to circumvent sacrificing animals to achieve a goal that traditionally necessitated animal harm? Have the authors repurposed a method and applied it to a problem it’s not traditionally associated with? Is it simply a monumental feat of work and success?

People are probably more likely to listen and engage with you if they know why, in all politeness, you have chosen to use their time to talk about a given paper.

It also helps them focus on the relevant bits of your presentation and form cogent questions.

Orally Present Key Findings and Methods of the Paper

Simple. Read the paper. Understand it. Make some slides. Present.

Okay, there are a lot of ways you can get this wrong and make a hash of it. We’ll tell you how to avoid these pitfalls later on.

But for now, acknowledge that a journal club meeting starts with a presentation that sets up the main bit of it—the discussion.

Invite Your Audience to Participate in a Discussion

The discussion is the primary and arguably most beneficial component of journal club since it gives the audience a platform to share ideas. Ideas formulated by their previous experience.

And I’ve said already that these contributions are unique and have the potential to be valuable to your work.

That’s why the discussion element is important.

Their questions might concur and elaborate on the contents of the paper and your presentation of it.

Alternatively, they might disagree with the methods and/or conclusions. They might even disagree with your presentation of technical topics.

Try not to be daunted, however, as all of this ultimately adds to your knowledge, and it should all be conducted in a constructive spirit.

Summarize the Meeting and Thank Your Audience for Attending

There’s no particularly enlightening reason as to why to do these things. Summarizing helps people come away from the meeting feeling like it was a positive and rewarding thing to attend.

And thanking people for their time is a simple courtesy.

How Do You Organize It?

Basic steps if you are the organizer.

Okay, we’ve just learned what goes into speaking at the journal club. But presenter or not, the responsibility of organizing it might fall to you.

So, logistically , how do you prepare a journal club? Simply follow these 5 steps:

• Distribute copies of the research article to potential participants.
• Arrange a meeting time and location.
• Organize a speaker.
• Hold the journal club.
• Seek feedback on the quality of the meeting.

Apart from point 5, these are fairly self-explanatory. Regarding point 5, feedback is essential to growing as a scientist and presenter. The easiest way to seek feedback is simply to ask.

Alternatively, you could create a form for all the meetings in the series and ask the audience to complete and return it to you.

Basic Steps If You Are the Speaker

If somebody has done all the logistics for you, great! Don’t get complacent, however.

Why not use the time to elevate your presentation to make your journal club contribution memorable and beneficial?

Don’t worry about the “hows” because we’re going to elaborate on these points, but here are 5 things you can do to ace your presentation:

• Don’t leave it to the last minute.
• Know your audience.
• Keep your presentation slides simple.
• Keep your audience engaged.
• Be open to questions and critiques.

Regarding point 1, giving yourself sufficient time to thoroughly read the article you have chosen to present ensures you are familiar with the material in it. This is essential because you will be asked questions about it. A confident reply is the foundation of an enlightening discussion.

Regarding point 3, we’re going to tell you exactly how to prepare effective slides in its own section later. But if you are in a rush, minimize the use of excessive text. And if you provide background information, stick to diagrams that give an overview of results from previous work. Remember: a picture speaks louder than a thousand words.

Regarding point 4, engagement is critical. So carry out a practice run to make sure you are happy with the flow of your presentation and to give you an idea of your timing. It is important to stick to the time that is allotted for you.

This provides good practice for more formal conference settings where you will be stopped if you run over time. It’s also good manners and shows consideration for the attendees.

And regarding point 5, as the presenter, questions are likely to be directed toward you. So anticipate questions from the outset and prepare for the obvious ones to the best of your ability.

There’s a limit to everyone’s knowledge, but being unable to provide any sort of response will be embarrassing and make you seem unprepared.

Anticipate that people might also disagree with any definitions you make and even with your presentation of other people’s data. Whether or not you agree is a different matter, but present your reasons in a calm and professional manner.

If someone is rude, don’t rise to it and respond calmly and courteously. This shouldn’t happen too often, but we all have “those people” around us.

How Do You Choose a Journal Club Paper?

Consider the quality of the journal.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean the paper itself but the journal it’s published in.

An obscure journal is more likely to contain science that’s either boring, sloppy, wrong, or all three.

And people are giving up their time and hope to be stimulated. So oblige them!

Journal impact factor and rejection rate (the ratio of accepted to rejected articles) can help you decide whether a paper is worth discussing.

Consider the Impact and Scope of the Paper

Similar to the above, but remember, dross gets published in high-impact journals too. Hopefully, you’ve read the paper you want to present. But ask yourself what makes this particular paper stand out from the millions of others to be worth presenting.

Keep It Relevant and Keep It Interesting

When choosing a paper to present, keep your audience in mind. Choose something that is relevant to the particular group you are presenting to. If only you and a few other people understand the topic, it can come off as elitist.

How Do You Break Down and Present the Paper?

Know and provide the background material.

Before you dive into the data, spend a few minutes talking about the context of the paper. What did the authors know before they started this work? How did they formulate their hypothesis? Why did they choose to address it in this way?

You may want to reference an earlier paper from the same group if the paper represents a continuation of it, but keep it brief.

Try to explain how this paper tackles an unanswered question in the field.

Understand the Hypothesis and Methods of the Paper

Make a point of stating the  hypothesis  or  main question  of the paper, so everyone understands the goal of the study and has a foundation for the presentation and discussion.

Everyone needs to start on the same foot and remain on the same page as the meeting progresses.

Turn the Paper into a Progression of Scientific Questions

Present the data as a logical series of questions and answers. A well-written paper will already have done the hard work for you. It will be organized carefully so that each figure answers a specific question, and each new question builds on the answer from the previous figure.

If you’re having trouble grasping the flow of the paper, try writing up a brief outline of the main points. Try putting the experiments and conclusions in your own words, too.

Feel free to leave out parts of the figures that you think are unnecessary, or pull extra data from the supplemental figures if it will help you explain the paper better.

Ask Yourself Questions about the Paper Before You Present

We’ve touched on this already. This is to prepare you for any questions that are likely to be asked of you. When you read the paper, what bits didn’t you understand?

Simplify Unfamiliar and Difficult Concepts

Not everyone will be familiar with the same concepts. For example, most biologists will not have a rigorous definition of entropy committed to memory or know its units. The concept of entropy might crop up in a biophysics paper, however.

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes and anticipate what they might not fully understand given their respective backgrounds.

If you are unsure, ask them if they need a definition or include a short definition in your slides.

Sum Up Important Conclusions

After you’ve finished explaining the nitty-gritty details of the paper, conclude your presentation of the data with a list of significant findings.

Every conclusion will tie in directly to proving the major conclusion of the paper. It should be clear at this point how the data answers the main question.

How Do You Present a Journal Club Powerpoint?

Okay, so we’ve just gone through the steps required to break down a paper to present it effectively at journal club. But this needs to be paired with a PowerPoint presentation, and the two bridged orally by your talk. How do you ace this?

Provide Broad Context to the Research

We are all bogged down by minutia and reagents out of necessity.

Being bogged down is research. But it helps to come up for air. Ultimately, how will the research you are about to discuss benefit the Earth and its inhabitants when said research is translated into actual products?

Science can be for its own sake, but funded science rarely is. Reminding the journal club audience of the widest aims of the nominated field provides a clear starting point for the discussion and shows that you understand the efficacy of the research at its most basic level.

The Golden Rule: A Slide per Minute

Remember during lectures when the lecturer would open PowerPoint, and you would see, with dismay, that their slides went up to 90 or something daft? Then the last 20 get rushed through, but that’s what the exam question ends up being based on.

Don’t be that person!

A 10-15 minute talk should be accompanied by? 10-15 slides! Less is more.

Be Judicious about the Information You Choose to Present

If you are present everything in the paper, people might as well just read it in their own time, and we can call journal club off.

Try to abstract only the key findings. Sometimes technical data is necessary for what you are speaking about because their value affects the efficacy of the data and validity of the conclusions.

Most of the time, however, the exact experimental conditions can be left out and given on request. It’s good practice to put all the technical data that you anticipate being asked for in a few slides at the end of your talk.

Use your judgment.

Keep the Amount of Information per Slide Low for Clarity

Your audience is already listening to you and looking at the slides, so they have a limited capacity for what they can absorb. Overwhelming them with visual queues and talking to them will disengage them.

Have only a few clearly related images that apply directly to what you speaking about at the time. Annotate them with the only key facts from your talk and develop the bigger picture verbally.

This will be hard at first because you must be on the ball and confident with your subject area and speaking to an audience.

And definitely use circles, boxes, and arrows to highlight important parts of figures, and add a flowchart or diagram to explain an unfamiliar method.

Keep It Short Overall

The exact length of your meeting is up to you or the organizer. A 15-minute talk followed by a 30-minute discussion is about the right length, Add in tea and coffee and hellos, and you get to an hour.

We tend to speak at 125-150 words per minute. All these words should not be on your slides, however. So, commit a rough script to memory and rehearse it.

You’ll find that the main points you need to mention start to stand out and fall into place naturally. Plus, your slides will serve as visual queue cards.

How Do You Ask a Question in Journal Club?

A well-organized journal club will have clear expectations of whether or not questions should be asked only during the discussion, or whether interruptions during the presentation are allowed.

And I don’t mean literally how do you soliloquize, but rather how do you get an effective discussion going.

Presenters: Ask Questions to the Audience

We all know how it goes. “Any questions?” Silence.

Scientists, by their very nature, are usually introverted. Any ideas they might want to contribute to a discussion are typically outweighed by the fear of looking silly in front of their peers. Or they think everyone already knows the item they wish to contribute. Or don’t want to be publicly disproven. And so on.

Prepare some questions to ask the audience in advance. As soon as a few people speak, everyone tends to loosen up. Take advantage of this.

Audience: Think About Topics to Praise or Critique

Aside from seeking clarification on any unclear topics, you could ask questions on:

• Does the data support the conclusions?
• Are the conclusions relevant?
• Are the methods valid?
• What are the drawbacks and limitations of the conclusions?
• Are there better methods to test the hypothesis?
• How will the research be translated into real-world benefits?
• Are there obvious follow-up experiments?
• How well is the burden of proof met?
• Is the data physiologically relevant?
• Do you agree with the conclusions?

How to Keep It Fun

Make it interactive.

Quizzes and polls are a great way to do this! And QR codes make it really easy to do on-the-fly. Remember, scientists, are shy. So why not seek their participation in an anonymized form?

You could poll your audience on the quality of the work. You could make a fun quiz based on the material you’ve covered. You could do a live “what happened next?” You could even get your feedback this way. Here’s what to do:

• Create your quiz or poll using Google forms .
• Make a shareable link.
• Paste the link into a free QR code generator .
• Put the QR code in the appropriate bit of your talk.

Use Multimedia

Talking to your audience without anything to break it up is a guaranteed way of sending them all to sleep.

Consider embedding demonstration videos and animations in your talk. Or even just pausing to interject with your own anecdotes will keep everyone concentrated on you.

Keep It Informal

At the end of the day, we’re all scientists. Perhaps at different stages of our careers, but we’ve all had similar-ish trajectories. So there’s no need for haughtiness.

And research institutes are usually aggressively casual in terms of dress code, coffee breaks, and impromptu chats. Asking everyone to don a suit won’t add any value to a journal club.

Your Journal Club Toolkit in Summary

Anyone can read a paper, but the value lies in understanding it and applying it to your own research and thought process.

Remember, journal club is about extracting wisdom from your colleagues in the form of a discussion while disseminating wisdom to them in a digestible format.

Need some inspiration for your journal club? Check out the online repositories hosted by PNAS and NASPAG to get your juices flowing.

We’ve covered a lot of information, from parsing papers to organizational logistics, and effective presentation. So why not bookmark this page so you can come back to it all when it’s your turn to present?

While you’re here, why not ensure you’re always prepared for your next journal club and download bitesize bio’s free journal club checklist ?

And if you present at journal club and realize we’ve left something obvious out. Get in touch and let us know. We’ll add it to the article!

• Linzer M et al . (1988) Impact of a medical journal club on house-staff reading habits, knowledge, and critical appraisal skills . JAMA 260 :2537–41

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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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The Scientific Hypothesis

The Key to Understanding How Science Works

How to Give a Great Journal Club Presentation

A lot of advanced science education takes place in the more-or-less formal setting of a journal club where one member of a group presents a paper from the scientific literature to the whole group. giving a good presentation is a learned skill; here are some tips on how to do it well..

• Pick a good paper. (Don’t get all neurotic about this. If you find it interesting and significant, then it will almost certainly benefit your group. If you’re in doubt, ask a colleague or mentor.) Read it. Two or three times. Skimming quickly may be enough to tell you whether or not there is something to it, but getting down to the level of detail that you’ll want to have under control for the actual presentation can easily take more time and effort than you first think it will. Is it clearly written and understandable? If you find it too difficult, or poorly written to get the message, chances are that others will struggle too. You might want to pick a different paper.
• Ask yourself why the authors did the research.  What did they hope to learn?  The abstract and conclusion of a paper generally express the essence of the work.  Read them carefully even before going over the rest of the paper in depth. It often helps you to figure out the big picture, especially when the authors seem to take it for granted that all readers will see what it is. Authors often start off by saying that some subject, X, “is not well-understood.”  Well, of course it’s not!  That’s why they got a paper out of studying X.  The statement usually just gives you a general idea of what the about and is only rarely the level of information that you want.  
• Find the hypothesis in the paper; most have one, but a great many papers that are based on hypotheses don’t say so explicitly (BTW, some authors say they’re testing a “model;” occasionally they are referring to an “animal model” such as a mouse, but usually a model that’s being tested is the same as a hypothesis). 
• The most important thing for your audience is to trace the logical flow of the paper. How do the experiments in the paper test the hypothesis? Is each result truly relevant to the hypothesis: that is, does it support or contradict it, or is it irrelevant to the truth of the hypothesis (this is more common than you might think)? 
• With practice you can make a smooth and informative narrative out of any average paper.  When transitioning from one figure to the next, avoid the trite and deadly-boring phrase “… and then they wanted to look at…” The authors certainly had a reason for “wanting to look at” whatever they looked at. Tell the audience what it was!  Why did they do what the authors did and why that experiment followed at that point.  What did they learn by doing it? 
• Be able to go over the important figures, tables or other displayed items in enough detail to make the main point(s) clear.
• You should understand the methods used by the authors well enough to explain them generally to a group, and say why the authors chose them. You are not expected to become a technical expert in the field represented by the paper, however. Be aware of notable advantages and limitations of the methods in case questions about them arise.
• Try to anticipate the kinds of questions that may come up, but if you can’t answer one, it is perfectly ok to say, “I don’t know.” We’ve all been there.  Maybe someone else in the group does know, in any case an honest statement of ignorance is preferable than trying to fake it. 
• You must be scrupulously fair to the authors, but you are not their advocate; your job is to discuss their paper in a critical and insightful way.  After presenting their reasoning and results as the authors would want them to be presented, feel free to point out shortcomings if you disagree with them or think that they have made a mistake in reasoning, execution, etc..  But be a bit cautious:  if you think that the authors made a bone-headed error, try extra hard to understand what they were doing.  It is possible that they did err somehow, but it is possible that you’ve missed something.  Hopefully, your audience will be engaged and following right along and they will raise critical questions as well. It is important to keep in mind that an attack on the paper is not an attack on you!  Your reputation is not on the line here, the authors’ reputations are.  Of course, if you wind up completely trashing the paper, it may appear that you didn’t follow rule number 1.
• Be aware that you may be the only person in the room who has actually read the paper.  You are the authority on it.  A common mistake is to assume that everyone else already knows full well what you just spent a week learning; after all, they showed up expecting to be enlightened.  There might be one or two experts in the audience, but you should assume that most people aren’t experts. And even experts are rarely offended by hearing a concise review of the basics: they know full well that the audience needs it. So don’t assume too much and do give enough detail. Your main task is to educate your colleagues about a piece of work that you think is interesting and valuable.  
• Plan to finalize your talk at least a day or so in advance. Practice going through the slides out loud (ideally with a couple of friends), indicating the major points of each one, but do not try to memorize or read your talk! It’s nice to know your transition to the next slide, but if you forget it, don’t panic – just advance the slide and pick up from there. (Some people like to have a card with a few notes on it as a security blanket in case of a public brain freeze.  Ordinarily, having a card handy is enough to guarantee that they won’t need it.)
• On the day of the talk show up early, get into the room, get your presentation loaded. and flip through the slides in advance.  Every experienced presenter has nightmare stories of last minute computer crashes, software incompatibilities, missing pointers, unfamiliar set-ups. These problems are not fun, and not what you want to have to cope with after you’ve been introduced. If you find a glitch during your run-through, you’ll have time to fix it.

1 thought on “ How to Give a Great Journal Club Presentation ”

I have encouraged students to study Brad’s tips on giving a great journal club presentation for 20 years. I plan to continue doing so!

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

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• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

5 Tips for Journal Club First-Timers

By Lucy Bauer

Monday, March 30, 2015

Research communities often uphold the ideal of scientific collaboration. But what does “collaboration” really mean? The picture that comes to mind can be people sitting, talking, and exchanging ideas that push toward the goal of creating better health. How can this exchange practically happen? One way is through a journal club. Recently, I had the privilege of presenting a journal article to my lab group’s journal club in the PAIN (Pain And Integrative Neuroscience) lab for  Dr. Catherine Bushnell . One goal of our lab is to look at the relationship and differences between itch and pain.

Me explaining part of the spinal neuron pathway in itch

So, what is the purpose of a journal club?

A journal club is a regular gathering of scientists to discuss a scientific paper found in a research journal. One or two members of the club present a summary of the chosen paper that the whole group has read. Then, the discussion begins. Attendees ask clarifying questions, inquire about different aspects of the experimental design, critique the methods, and bring a healthy amount of skepticism (or praise) to the results.

For my first journal club at the NIH, we considered a paper that looks at how itch is mediated in the spinal cord from the skin up to the brain. The authors show that mice lacking a gene for a specific type of spinal neuron constantly scratch specific areas of their bodies corresponding to the missing spinal interneuron. When these mice receive a stem cell implant, a normal reaction to itch is restored. This paper generated much discussion about neuronal development, ethical considerations, and how the results relate to our research within the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).

The ideas found and discussed at the journal club can help expand and balance each scientist’s scope of what is happening in the world of research while informing experimental plans and research directions. Here are five things I learned from my experience leading a journal club that can help you prepare to get the most out of your discussions:

1. Know the background material.

Prepare beforehand for your journal club presentation by knowing the research that has preceded and is related to the paper you will be presenting. This will make your discussion more informed and effective. Of course, it is likely impossible to know everything that would relate to your journal club presentation, but even a little bit of background information is helpful.

2. Make your presentation concise.

Every paper has many details about methods, results, discussion, future directions, etc. It is very helpful to give your audience the general flow of the entire paper and research before adding in all the details.

3. Simplify unfamiliar concepts.

Journal clubs often have members of varying backgrounds. Hence, not all concepts will be familiar to everyone in the group. It can be helpful to give a short summary of techniques and results. Detailed explanations can be provided later on, because the primary focus of presenting the paper should be giving an overview of the research.

4. Ask yourself questions about the paper before you present.

As the presenter, you may be the semi-“expert” on the paper, but as you get to know the research, you may discover some questions you have about the methods. Share with the group the questions you came across yourself and any answers you may have found to address them.

5. Ask specific questions to the members of the journal club.

When entering into discussion time, ask the group for their thoughts on specific topics found in the paper to create a starting point for conversation about the paper. Questions can be about methods, results, general ideas, and much more!

Journal clubs are great forums for the exchange of thoughts and ideas. Clubs held at the NIH are just one way through which necessary scientific discussion and collaboration can take place. Be sure to look into journal clubs happening near you!

If you’re at the NIH, the Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE) hosts  Summer Journal Clubs  that are ideal for trainees just getting their feet wet. And for our colleagues around the world, the NIH National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides an online platform to discuss journal articles in our connected world via the  PubMed Commons Journal Clubs .

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• Volume 22, Issue 6
• Journal Clubs: 2. Why and how to run them and how to publish them
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• Jeffrey K Aronson
• Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences , University of Oxford , Oxford OX2 6GG , UK
• Correspondence to Dr Jeffrey K Aronson, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX26GG, UK; jeffrey.aronson{at}phc.ox.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebmed-2017-110861

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Journal clubs have many functions, including the provision of a forum for developing skills in critical appraisal, an essential part of being a competent clinician.

From early on, journal clubs reported their proceedings in academic journals. The Zoological Journal Club of Michigan , for example, regularly reported its activities in the journal Science (see figure 1 ).  Table 1 lists a selection of other journals that publish journal club articles, showing the wide range of topics covered. Modern methods of conducting journal clubs include the use of online media to encourage interactive discussion, 1 including blogs, 2 twitter, 3 and virtual journal clubs. 4

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The contents page of Science for Friday 7 December 1900, listing the proceedings of the Zoological Journal Club of the University of Michigan .

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Some journals that publish articles under the heading ‘Journal Club’

It is therefore appropriate that Evidence-Based Medicine  (EBM) should feature a regular journal club report.

In order to find out how others run journal clubs and the effects that they have, I searched PubMed for articles on journal clubs, using the search term ‘journal[ti] & (club[ti] OR clubs[ti])’ (1699 hits) and found three types of articles: articles in which authors described a paper that they had discussed at a journal club or thought would be suitable material for a journal club; studies of the effects of running journal clubs; and reviews of various sorts.

I found three systematic reviews. One recommended the journal club as a tool for assessing practice-based competencies that might be difficult to assess by other means 5 ; one reported that journal clubs improve knowledge and critical appraisal skills but that there was no evidence on translation of evidence from journal clubs into clinical practice 6 ; and one reported that journal clubs seemed to be the preferred way of teaching critical appraisal skills but that it was not clear which elements were most important for learning. 7

I have synthesized much of this information and have distilled what I consider to be the important points that arise from the formal studies and reviews and describe the objectives of a journal club and how to run one.  I also give guidance on the preparation of journal club reports that we hope readers will submit for publication. We look forward to hearing from you.

Five reasons for running a journal club

To highlight new findings.

To teach practitioners how to search for interesting articles representing the best evidence to inform clinical practice.

To encourage practitioners to read and appraise publications critically and give them the ability to do so.

To encourage practitioners to do applied clinical research and to show them how.

To improve debating skills, demonstrate leadership skills, and aid peer mentorship.

Sixteen suggestions on how to run a journal club

The members of the club should on the whole have shared or complementary interests, including statisticians, but do not discourage multidisciplinarity, if available; involve everyone, from students down to professors.

Run the club regularly at the same time on the same day of the week, so that it becomes a fixture.

Have at least one designated skilled leader who regularly participates in the club.

Ideally, make attendance mandatory and keep a record.

Ensure that the meetings start and end on time.

Encourage communality; this could be done, for example, by asking everyone at the start of each meeting to give their name and a piece of information about themselves (eg, a movie they have recently seen).

Discuss up to three papers from peer-reviewed journals; develop a theme each time; occasionally include books of interest.

Split presentation and discussion times 50/50.

Try to choose papers that you think may influence clinical practice and discuss why.

Disseminate the chosen articles in advance, with questions that might be asked; the leader should bring spare copies to the meeting.

Keep notes and conduct regular audits (eg, yearly); give feedback on later developments; link it to a Xmas quiz.

Welcome guest speakers from time to time to add expert comment.

Provide free enticing refreshments; have a rota for making the tea/coffee.

Use your imagination to make it fun.

Publish your experience.

Adapt these suggestions to suit your own circumstances.

Ten tips on how to prepare a journal club article for EBM

The article should have proceeded from an actual journal club.

The paper discussed need not have been published in EBM .

At the start, give the full reference (Vancouver style) of the article that you have discussed.

The following framework, adapted from that originally suggested by Riegelman 8 may be useful: aims, methods, results, interpretation, implications for practice, and further research.

Say what the purpose of the study was.

Summarise the important points in the article, paying particular attention to the methods that were used.

Briefly describe the main results.

Highlight the strengths and weaknesses; how could the study have been improved? did the authors achieve what they set out to achieve?

Describe the implications of the results and whether you think they may or may not influence practice beneficially or adversely.

If relevant, say what further research might be carried out.

• Radecki R , et al
• Sparks MA ,
• Phelan PJ , et al
• Chetlen AL ,
• Solberg AO , et al
• Golnik KC , et al
• Deenadayalan Y ,
• Grimmer-Somers K ,
• Prior M , et al
• McKenzie ME ,
• Maclean A , et al
• Riegelman RK

Competing interests JKA is an associate editor for EBM.

Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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Nightlife City Guide

Moscow: nightlife and clubs

Moscow nightlife: despite the freezing weather, the Russian capital gets hot as the sun goes down. Between discos, luxury, exaggerated parties and beautiful Russian girls, the Moscow nightlife offers everything you need for memorable nights.

Moscow nightlife

The city of Moscow is definitely one of the most interesting European cities: the stories about underground lines and secret bunkers, the architecture of its buildings, from the Kremlin to St. Basil's Cathedral, up to the Soviet style of the Seven Sisters and modern skyscrapers, make the Russian capital is a unique and fascinating city.

One of the many things that Moscow is famous for is its wild nightlife . Moscow never sleeps. If there is anything true about Russians, it is that they love to party! Despite its freezing weather, Moscow turns out to be a hot city with endless fun, hip nightclubs, extreme luxury, beautiful Russian girls and lots of booze when night falls!

In fact, in recent years, the Russian capital has definitively abandoned the gray period of communism and its inhabitants have given vent to their desire for fun. As you might expect in a city of over 12 million people, Moscow has an amazing array of nightlife options and a huge choice for all tastes, whether you are a jazz fan, hardcore clubbers or just plain old alcoholics. The nightlife in Moscow winds through a multitude of alternative and transgressive nightclubs where the watchword is to meet new people and spend a night of unbridled and uninhibited fun . In addition to the numerous discos, in the Russian capital there are also 20 casinos open until dawn. For those who want a break of intriguing relaxation, in the city of Moscow there are also numerous massage salons .

Most of Moscow's nightclubs contain a restaurant, a bar area and a nightclub (the larger ones also have bowling alleys, billiards and a casino!). Perhaps because Moscow is such a large metropolis with very cold temperatures and taxis are so expensive that the owners of the bars and clubs want to offer their customers an all in one place for night entertainment.

So, in other words, Moscow is not the best city in the world for bar-crawling, especially bearing in mind that these multipurpose venues often charge entrance, but rather it is better to carefully choose the club where to spend the night.

For a quieter and more sober evening, head for an evening stroll along the Via Arbat or the Red Square to be fascinated by the lights of the city and the grandeur of the buildings, and admire the shops and street artists. An alternative to experience Moscow's nightlife is to spend an evening of lyric, ballet or opera. The Russian capital is home to around sixty theaters, the most famous of which is the world-renowned Bolshoi Theater (Theater Square, 1, Moscow).

Moscow nightlife districts

Moscow's nightlife is not concentrated in a single district but is scattered throughout the city. However, there are areas with a greater concentration of bars and nightclubs .

The Krasnij Oktjabr (Russian for "Red October") complex, a red brick building located on the island in the center of the Moscow River that once housed a chocolate factory, is dotted with numerous trendy nightclubs and offers spectacular views of the river and the symbolic places of the Russian capital. This is where the most glamorous parties in Moscow take place, there are numerous bars, restaurants and art galleries.

Other neighborhoods with good nightlife are the old manufactory area near the Russian government building which houses some bars, the area around the Trubnaya metro and around Kuznetsky Most , while the Kurskaya groups the clubs with electronic music. We can also mention the area of ​​the Patriarch's ponds, an area that is teeming with quiet bars.

Clubs and discos in Moscow

The crowd is very mixed. Students, young professionals, techno lovers, tourists all gather at Propaganda. Everyone comes to enjoy the music and have fun. It is one of the few clubs where the dancefloor dominates and there are hardly any tables, apart from a few that overlook the entire space. Propaganda is a restaurant until midnight. You can come earlier for dinner and stay for dancing. After midnight, the staff clears the tables from the dance floor and the whole place turns into a club. The place is different from the usual Moscow restaurant / club hybrids, however, because the atmosphere changes completely from "relaxed restaurant" to "underground electro club". Not to be missed.

There are more areas with different music. In the first area, expect a mix of traditional music and Russian pop songs. In the second, slightly larger area, there is live Russian pop music until 2am. After that it is mostly some kind of electronic music. The club is frequented by beautiful Russian girls around 18-25 years old, stunning students or models, and of course there is a good deal of young Russians, middle-aged men and foreign tourists trying their luck! Unlike many other nightclubs, the Icon is a pure nightclub and not a club turned into a restaurant. In any case, if you like to party in a big club and want to savor the typical Moscow nightlife , this is the perfect solution.

The crowd is the same as in other high-end Moscow clubs. Men are rarely under the age of 35 and are committed to giving the impression that money is not an issue. The women are amazing even by Moscow nightlife - if you want to meet Moscow's super models, this is the place! Ideal if you want to toast with the Moscow elite.

The club is located on two floors. The lower floor is mainly frequented by people hanging out at the bar and is good for conversation. The narrow stairs that perfectly fit the student atmosphere of the club take you to the main floor where the real party takes place, complete with a bedlam and girls dancing on the bar counter. In the summer months there is also an outdoor terrace. The place is always crowded and bouncers unnecessarily queue people - having a table or someone inside can be the key to skipping the queue. Otherwise, you might end up waiting half an hour or more. Come early or come back late if you want to avoid the crowds.

The crowd that frequents this club is quite mixed. People are less trendy and more underground. The place is suitable for afterhours, so most people arrive from 3am onwards.

Immediately upon entering, you will have the feeling that you have come to the local high school graduation prom instead of a real Moscow nightclub. There is no real interior design, but basically just a large hall with a stage and a bar. The crowd is almost entirely made up of teenagers and young people. Not many of the teens speak English, but it probably doesn't matter after all the alcohol. The music ranges from Russian pop and hip-hop to the most famous international hits. Perfect if you want to party and drink alcohol in one of the cheapest clubs in Moscow .

Here too, it's full of beautiful girls and it's also a great place to hit them off, as those who come here are notoriously more approachable. The advice is to be very firm with the girls who approach and to make your intentions clear. If you want to be 100% sure to get in, come at 2am when the club is still uncrowded.

Oblaka plays a mix of Russian and international pop music. Occasionally, as in many other clubs, there are performances by Russian pop singers. As is often the case in these types of clubs, the music and DJ are not the best but the guests don't seem to care.

Moscow's bars and pubs

The bar looks similar but still distinctly different than regular Moscow posh clubs. Most of the people who frequent this place are over 25, and you can find everything from young professionals to creative types to self-proclaimed models. Great if you want to see the "real Muscovites" celebrate without the overblown flashes of wealth. The proposed music is a strange mix of old and new commercial songs and Russian pop.

Downstairs is a large open space that opens its doors wide in the summer. The interior is rustic, yet elegant, with wooden furnishings and plenty of seating. The interior combined with Ugolek's popularity creates a crowded yet intimate atmosphere, especially on weekends. People come to chat, drink and eat. The upstairs bar has a more welcoming atmosphere. It is smaller, with soft lighting and armchairs to be able to relax. On weekends there is a DJ who mixes electronic music and transforms the bar into a relaxed place, ideal for the pre-party.

Map of clubs, pubs and bars in Moscow

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Russia must face consequences for imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter, lawyer says

FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court, in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 14, 2023. A lawyer for The Wall Street Journal said Thursday, March 21, 2024, that Russia must face consequences for its detention of Gershkovich, one of the newspaper’s reporters. Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, on espionage charges, which he and the newspaper deny. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov, File)

FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is escorted from the Lefortovsky court in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 26, 2024. A lawyer for The Wall Street Journal said Thursday, March 21, 2024, that Russia must face consequences for its detention of Gershkovich, one of the newspaper’s reporters. Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, on espionage charges, which he and the newspaper deny. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia must face consequences for its detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich , a lawyer for the newspaper said Thursday as the journalist approaches the one-year anniversary of his arrest.

“In a scenario like this, where a reporter is taken off the beat for just doing his job — wrongfully detained — there ought to be immediate consequences from the government,” said Jason Conti, general counsel at Dow Jones, which publishes the newspaper. He was speaking at a National Press Club event in Washington.

Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, on espionage charges, which he and the newspaper deny, while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. The U.S. government has designated him as wrongfully detained and Russian authorities have detailed no evidence to support the charges.

He was visited in jail on Thursday by U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, according to the American embassy in Russia, which said in a social media post that “Evan remains strong and resilient, but it is a tragedy he awaits a trial for a crime he did not commit.”

A court in Moscow last month extended Gershkovich’s detention until the end of this month, though the most realistic prospect for his release appears to be through the same sort of prisoner swap that has freed other Americans jailed in Russia, including WNBA star Brittney Griner and Marine veteran Trevor Reed .

In December, the U.S. State Department said that Russia had rejected several proposals for freeing Gershkovich and Paul Whelan , a corporate security executive from Michigan who has been jailed in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage-related charges that both he and the U.S. government dispute. Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

More recently, allies of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have said that talks with Russian and Western officials about a prisoner swap were underway just days before the Kremlin critic’s sudden and unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony.

Conti, the newspaper’s lawyer, did not discuss those negotiations during the Thursday appearance but said, “We follow every development that happens in Russia. They all have an impact.”

He said there had been “a lot of activity” and dialogue aimed at securing Gershkovich’s release, but in the meantime, the U.S. government should impose consequences — including possibly sanctions — over the reporter’s arrest.

“If you think about what are the consequences of what’s happened so far — a great reporter is sitting in prison, a number of Western journalists have pulled out of Russia, it’s much harder to cover the story from the ground — and, eventually, if you believe the playbook on these things, Russia will get a bad guy back,” Conti said.

“What is the disincentive to do this again? Why wouldn’t you continue to take hostages of good reporters if you are an authoritarian country or a wannabe authoritarian country,” he added.

The U.S. has already piled on sanctions against Russia in the two years since the war against Ukraine. It’s not clear what additional sanctions could be used to punish Moscow over Gershkovich’s arrest.

Also at the event was Gershkovich’s sister, Danielle, who said she regularly communicates with her brothers through letters.

“We tend to keep it light in our letters. We’re just mainly trying to support one other and make each other laugh,” she said.

For International Women’s Day, he arranged for his sister and his mother to get flowers.

“He’s always thinking about us, worrying about us — that’s his biggest concern,” Danielle Gershkovich said. “And we’re concerned about him.”