How to Give a Journal Club presentation

On a sunny Friday afternoon, the Spring 2025 CORE interns at CCOP came together for an essential session: learning how to present at Journal Clubs (JCs). This gathering wasn't just about understanding the format—it was about developing a critical research skill and working through a paper presented in JC style by CCOP Leaders Rachel Wyetzner and Peyton Dooley.

Video Credits: Kenna Fung

Journal Club presentations challenge students to dive deep into a scientific paper, walking peers through each figure, evaluating every experiment, and dissecting the methods with care. It’s a rigorous exercise that sharpens analytical thinking and communication. Yet, for many young researchers, leading such a discussion can be intimidating. Taking the reins in a room of peers and mentors requires confidence, clarity, and practice.

To help demystify the process, experienced presenters Peyton and Rachel shared insights, strategies, and encouragement—setting the stage for interns to build their own voice as scientific communicators.

Here are some tips from our CCOP Leaders on how to give a Journal Club Presentation!

1. Understand the purpose of a Journal Club

   Reading literature and analysing it with peers is essential for staying updated in the work in the field, honing critical thinking skills, improving scientific presentation and oratory skills, and gaining new ideas from novel experimentation methods. It is also important for interdisciplinary learning through discussion with peers often working on different research projects, and building scientific community.

   
   

2. Selecting a paper for Journal Club

   Before giving a JC presentation, you must pick a paper to present. Ideally this paper would have some link to your research, or contains a cool experimental method, or simply piques your interest.

   
   

Tip: It helps foster productive discussion if the peers in your JC group either have prior general knowledge of the field that the paper discusses. If the field of the paper is new to ANY of your JC participants, you MUST give a succinct but expansive background. Ideally, your background section should be no more than three slides. Keep it concise every sentence you say and every figure you show should highlight a key experiment or result from a previous paper that helps your audience understand the context of the paper you're presenting. Remember to correctly cite every piece of information you present!

Another Tip: Try to send the JC paper to your expected audience before the JC so they can familiarize themselves with the field and methods in the paper.

3. Learn how to read a paper thoroughly

   Each segment of the paper - from the introduction to the ‘Discussions and Conclusion’ provides important information to the reader about the field as it stands, specific experimentation, and interpretation of the results from experimentation. As both our lovely presenters Peyton and Rachel exclaimed, “Highlight!” - using a highlighter (physically, or on your laptop) to highlight key insights from each section of a research paper is helpful! Here is a lovely infographic that our presenters Rachel and Peyton used to explain the purpose and key insights garnered from each section of a research paper:

   

   
   

4. Take notes

   For each figure, jot down the following

   1. Aim of the figure/experiment

   2. Method used (you might have to peek at the ‘Methods and Materials’ section for this)

   3. Result of the experiment

   4. YOUR Interpretation of the result

   5. THE AUTHOR’S interpretation of the result

   6. Contribution of the figure and result to the main question addressed by the paper

      
      

5. General Structure of the JC presentation

   Here is an infograph adapted from Peyton and Rachel’s slides explaining the structure of a JC presentation:

   

   
   

6. Use as many slides as you like, and sometimes animation

   Animating text and figures on your presentation can help the audience focus on the specific figures and/or text on your slide that you are referring to. The last thing an audience wants to see is a slide that contains 10,000 images and lines of text that they have no cue about, so feel free to use one slide per figure or one slide per section of a panel (eg. one slide for Fig. 1 (a) and a new slide for Fig. 1 (b))

   
   

7. Enjoy the discussion and don't be afraid to voice your opinions

   Remember, you are a VALUED member of the scientific community and you need to make your opinions heard, so speak about the science you presented objectively, even if that means (respectfully) disagreeing with the authors.

The session was expertly led by Rachel and Peyton, who guided students through a deep dive into the experiments, methods, and conclusions of their chosen Journal Club paper: Oh H, Irvine KD. In vivo regulation of Yorkie phosphorylation and localization. Development. 2008. Through thoughtful questions and interactive discussion, they modeled what a strong JC presentation looks like. By the end of the afternoon, students left not only with snacks in hand, but also with a toolbox of practical skills and insights to carry into their future research careers.

Photo credit: Rahul Vishwa

(A huge thank you to Rachel and Peyton for allowing use of their slides and for letting us record thor presentation for this article)

- Ananya