My guide to journal club

I have a journal club to prepare for a couple of weeks’ time, and I guess it could be handy to write a guide on preparing for a journal club presentation. Or at least, this is what I do about it.

Selection of journal : I tend to choose a journal which is related to my work, but still contain plenty of information that would be of interest to everyone else in my lab. Such as methods or statistics that would be useful to most of my colleagues.

Informing others : well, this is obvious. I normally send an internal email with the article in PDF so everyone can at the very least have a quick look through, without having to go through the trouble of searching and downloading the paper again.

Preparing presentation :  give a background to the paper, look into the methods that were used, summarising the main findings and discuss the authors’ conclusion. I try to use mainly the graphs/tables etc in the paper as a mean of presenting the results, as oppose to wordy descriptions.

Discussion and critiques : just because something has been published, it doesn’t mean it’s flawless. With the group, we have Q&As to try to dissect the analysis and the data/result validity, and how the method would have worked in a different projects, how adaptations can be made, how statistics can be more appropriately interpretated, etc.

Moleskine delight

I used to carry around a Filofax with me at all time. Less nowadays though, even if I still use it on a regular basis, as I have my contacts contained within, along with some task lists etc. I have however stopped using Filofax as pages for bouncing off ideas and thoughts.

I have swopped to using Moleskine instead for all my scribbles on the run.

Maybe it’s because it’s light and easy to carry everywhere, especially on days when I use only a small bag and need to limit what I have with me. Particularly if I don’t need my filofax, then it’s best to just leave it at home anyway. It would have been awful if I lose my contacts etc, along with my scribbles. By splitting the two parts into two books, the loss is somewhat minimised.

I use Moleskine with just blank pages on them. No lines, no boxes. It’s great this way because not only I can write in whichever way or orientation as I wish, I can also draw and doodles as I go along. And I jot down all sorts of rubbish in it.

Ideas for work that came suddenly to me.

My thoughts as I mulled over certain events of the moment.

Potential blog entries.

Sketches of thing that I see and liking them on sight.

Notes and reminders to myself.

Calculation of household bills.

Shopping list.

…

…

The list is endless. Afterall there is no limit to how I use my Moleskine. It’s a great way to track all the different aspects of my day, no matter how little. It soothes me to put things into words or pictures.

I guess you could say this appeals to the controlling facet of being me…

More importantly, for a graduate student, it lets you see through your own life as you grow up and develop over time,  and to track how you progresses through the course of your study.

Be paranoid, be really paranoid

Well, I’m not talking about guarding the research project data with dear life (although you would to certain extent) so that it remains a top secret from but a few, in case there’s leak and someone decided to run away with your results and publish it. Hardly likely going to happen I think, although I could be wrong on this count.

I trust people to be a bit more honest.

It’s the machines that I don’t trust as much. So I made multiple backup copies of my work in our server machine. Of the server to external hard drives. Of the server to the servers in the bioinformatics support department. Of the server to multiple DVDs. Of the server to my own computer AND laptop.

And anything related to writing, I also save a copy in my email system. Along with the entire relevant folder in 3 different servers in different locations.

A lot of redundancies I know. But I feel better this way until the writing is completely wrapped up for particular project. I will then remove those from the other machines just so I don’t take up unnecessary space and wasting resources.

I rather have multiple copies at this stage than not have anything in case something happen, say server breakdown with failed backups, or (touch wood) fire in the building. Two labs down the corridor had been involved in a fire before, and that was a bit too close for comfort.