Hi,

It's my turn next week to pick a paper and review in front of our group as part of our weekly journal club meeting. I am having real dificulty picking a paper and even when I have picked one I am not sure how to go about it. Any tips or advice? I am getting nervous already!

Hi Jen,

Pick a paper that you find interesting and is somewhat relevant to your research area. For example any new techniques that would be of interest to your group.

For the actual presentation, how long does it need to be?

Pick a paper from a journal with a high impact factor to avoid doing a really crappy paper. Make sure you read through the methods part especially carefully because the others will ask questions such as "At what dosis was this performed", or "How much salt did they use for this extraction?". If you don't understand a method look it up or ask a more experienced member of your lab.
If methods are used that you yourself don't use try to find someone that does use them and ask if the experiments were done correctly. Be critical, always ask what controls are there/missing.
After you have prepared it ask a postdoc to go through with it and help you find the weaknesses of the paper.
Finally, don't take it personally if the others weren't convinced of the paper- in three years there was no paper that cnvinced everybody in my lab

Its an hour. I find it really hard to be critical. I am new and I have never done anything like this before. When others have reviewed papers they saw things to criticise that I missed so thats worrying me a bit.

also how do I find out which are the best journals in my field?

Err- what field are you in??

veterinary immunolgy

Why not ask another student/post-doc/your supervisor for advice? There is no shame in asking these questions, you can't know it all when you've just started. Good luck.

For your lit review, what were the journals that cropped up the most often? Those would be a starting point.

You can find impact factors on Web of Knowledge/Science...

Nature and Science will have good papers. They have an high impact factor. I am sure they cover immunology.

AHHhHHH!!! its today I am so scared!!! ANy tips on staying calm etc?

lol I don't think that would be a good idea (im not a well behaved drunk).

How did this go?

it went okay. Much better than I thought. I think I did well considering it was the first time I had done anything like this.