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The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Astronomy Culture: Journal Club
January 29th, 2010
I missed our astronomy journal club today, so I thought I could take some of that time I “saved” and invest it here in talking about what is journal club.
In the sciences, you generally finish classes in your second year of graduate school, and are not likely to take more. Teach more yes, but not take more.
Additionally, this is when a scientist focuses on their thesis topic. Focuses deep. Becomes the world expert on some little tiny niche in some sub-sub-field. After getting the PhD, there are post-doc positions and perhaps eventually a faculty job, with each career step predicated upon ample publication. Those who publish most tend to be those who stay in their subfield, for better or worse. Not so much new to learn to write each paper as someone who does very different things.
Still, a scientist should keep up with the broader field, at least the important results. There are not a lot of formal ways of doing this, and most scientists I know can’t keep up with reading papers in their subfield let alone outside it.
One way astronomical culture has evolved to deal with this problem is to invent the “Journal Club.” In most departments, and not all have a journal club, people meet once a week to discuss a new or relatively new paper of special interest, with one person leading the discussion. Most of these papers are preprints available online from the astrophysics preprint server.
There are different philosophies about what Journal Club is for and how to run it. I’ve outlined some of my personal thoughts above. Others sometimes feel it’s for educating grad students, and giving them a chance to give more informal presentations before needing to give high-pressure seminars like dissertation defenses.
I don’t know if journal clubs are common in all fields, but I’ve seen them in most astronomy departments I’ve been in or visited for any length of time.
It’s tough sometimes, with teaching, students, faculty meetings, administrative work, and your own research to even pay attention to the latest cool planet discovered or a new record-holder for most distant object. Journal Club helps a lot. When you find the time to attend.
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Journal Club is a marvelous invention and serves many purposes. It provides more than just presentation opportunities for students, and helping us to keep up with the broader literature. In order to present a paper well, one has to deconstruct it. This is a skill that graduate students need to learn. As well as having to do this for their own presentations, they also see how other people do it.
You don’t seem to value the presentation practice aspect, but this is also an important part of our development as academics. As a graduate student I hated doing Journal Club. I got so nervous I would feel physically sick. But being forced to do it made my first conference presentation so much easier. And now I love giving talks.
The only downside I see is that in a diverse department like ours, which is dominated by physicists rather than astronomers, it doesn’t always achieve the aspect you value.
I’m happy with my ability to give presentations and deconstruct a paper, so my bias prevented me from emphasizing how important it is to develop those skills as a scientist. You’re totally right. I was a nervous speaker in grad school, too.
Our solution is to have a journal club just for astronomy. The physicists can have their own if they want.
Thanks Mike for this fascinating post. I never heard of journal clubs before, but then I’m not a PhD person. However, I wish I was in a club like this but for popular science kind of people. I have a friend who belongs to a “supper club” where members takes turn giving speeches about any topic they want. I tend to think I use my blog as a journal club sometimes. I read something, digest it, and then try to explain the ideas in a blog post. Like Ang said, I should think more about my presentation.
You know, Jim, back before the internet, tv, radio, and such, I think this sort of activity was much more generally common. Reading about Einstein and his Olympia Academy, where they read the important scientific and philosophical books of the day and discussed them seriously at great length…they just seemed so much more intellectually dedicated than we do today. Blogging may be changing that a little, as I do see weighty topics seriously discussed by large groups, which is nice.