Exciting news came across my Twitter feed today: PubMed Commons is launching a journal club feature. What’s a journal club?
As described by the PubMed Commons Team:
Around the world, the journal club is a cornerstone engagement with the scholarly literature. Whether in face-to-face meetings or on social media platforms, researchers, physicians, and trainees gather to debate and converse about publications. Participants share their views on methods and interpretations of results. They discuss how publications fit into a broader context or might inform their own research or practice.
In short, the journal club can represent a major intellectual investment – and a long-standing form of post-publication evaluation.
The drawback to journal clubs is that the information rarely gets out to a broader audience. We do some analysis of individual papers here on the Biofortified Blog, and many other blogs do as well, but the discussion doesn’t get tied back to the paper. With PubMed Commons, though, it’s very easy to share information about a specific paper, as I did for Aris and LeBlanc 2011.
This new PubMed Commons journal club feature provides a whole new way for Biofortified Blog readers to participate in discussion and bring that discussion back to the scientific literature. When applicable, we can link the resulting discussions to the “Links to outside analysis of this resource” section in GENERA, too!
I propose that we start a BFI PubMed Commons Journal Club account. If we have a lot of interest we could divide into groups based on topics. We could meet via email, conference call, or video chat. The time commitment would be minimal, discussing one paper per month (or even every other month if people prefer).
Comment below if you are interested in participating. What an exciting activity to look forward to in the new year!