Under the patronage of the Department of Pharmacy a Journal club has been formed to identify and mentor the science enthusiasts of BRAC University. The idea is to provide a platform for students to meet regularly (in person, online, or both) to critically evaluate recent articles in the scientific literature. We will organize it around a defined subject in basic or applied research in pharmaceutical and healthcare related field. During each meeting, a paper or research literature will be selected and will be presented by a group of students. The presenters should provide sufficient background information so that people, who are not experts, can understand what is being discussed and must explain how the article contributes to our understanding in relation to the particular field of study. Attendees will then collectively discuss and critique the chosen paper. The selected article should be the one that are not directly related to their own research and are from high impact journals when possible. Discussions aid in the critical evaluation of the strength and appropriateness of the research design, the statistical analysis techniques and enable the bringing together of the results of several papers to evaluate how useful they are individually and collectively. For the full benefit of everyone involved, student members have to attend the meetings on a regular basis.
Journal clubs are vital in the education of graduate studies. These help make the student members become more familiar with the advanced literature in the field of study. In addition, the journal club will help improve the students' critical thinking skills for understanding and debating current topics of active interest in the scientific field. In future, the Department of Pharmacy might organize scientific events for all research students in its labs to help keep them updated with the literature produced by their peers who work in related fields.
More specifically, papers/reviews will be chosen to illustrate recent applications of tools (eg, biophysical, computational, etc.) and the wide range of experimental approaches that are available. While some of these may illustrate the application of a particular tool, many of them will also illustrate the application of several biophysical tools to one particular topic (e.g. protein folding); these examples will be chosen to emphasize how various experimental approaches provide complementary information about a biological problem. The students will, however, be also encouraged to use the various available Search engines such as Google and PubMed to explore the literature themselves.