Journal Clubs: 2. Why and how to run them and how to publish them.

232 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, including blogs, twitter, and virtual journal clubs. 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; 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; 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. 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 Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK