Journal Club Template¶
Use this as a starting point if your group uses slides or a structured format. Adapt it freely. Every journal club is different, and many groups do not use slides at all. Aim for roughly one slide per minute of talk time.
Suggested Slide Structure¶
| Slide | Title | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Title | Paper title, authors, journal or ArXiv ID, your name, date |
| 2 | Why this paper? | Why did you bring it? (Interesting result, relevant to your work, you are sceptical, a nice figure, etc.) |
| 3 | Context | What is the broader problem? One paragraph, one figure if available |
| 4 | This paper's question | One sentence: what specific question does this paper address? |
| 5 | Approach | How did they tackle it? Focus on the key idea, not every step |
| 6–N | Results | One key result per slide, always with the figure |
| N+1 | Strengths and open questions | What is convincing? What would you want to see next? What are you uncertain about? |
| N+2 | Discussion | Two or three questions to open the conversation |
Discussion Prompts¶
Use these to start the discussion, or write your own:
- What assumption in this paper are you least confident about?
- Is there a simpler explanation that is not ruled out by these results?
- What experiment or observation would most convincingly confirm or refute this?
- Does this result connect to anything else you have seen recently?
- I found [specific result or figure] surprising. Did anyone else?
Notes¶
- Short is usually better. A ten-minute presentation that sparks a long discussion is a success.
- You do not need to cover every section. One clear key result is worth more than five rushed ones.
- Saying "I did not fully understand this part" is fine, and often opens a useful discussion.
- If your group does chalk talks or informal presentations, ignore the slide structure and focus on the prompts.