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Monthly Journal Club

The monthly Journal Club is being launched to facilitate a space for knowledge sharing, continuous learning, critical evaluation, and collaborative ideation within the Data Science Without Borders community.

Our community is comprised of talented researchers and their teams who are engaged in significant and fascinating research. Regularly, Pathfinder Teams and technical partners encounter and share diverse research articles relevant to their day-to-day work within the broader DSWB community.

These Journal Club sessions will provide a structured platform for us to delve into some of these impactful articles, carefully selected and recommended by our Pathfinder Countries. This will be an opportunity for us to collectively and critically examine new methodologies, frameworks, tools, and AI/ML concepts, specifically exploring their direct relevance to our ongoing work.

Schedule

Our monthly meetings will convene on the first Wednesday of each month.

DateTeamPapersLed By
16 April 2025OSPO NowPhung e al, 2024, Zenodo slidesMalvika & Precious
4 June 2025IRESSEFFrevent el al (2023) and Daffe et al (2022)Moctar and team
2 July 2025DGHTBATBA
6 August 2025APHRCTBATBA
3 September 2025AHRITBATBA
1 October 2025IRESSEFTBATBA
5 November 2025DGHTBATBA
3 December 2025APHRCTBATBA

Format

Each Journal Club session will be led by a different Pathfinder Team, with each team focusing on 1-2 pre-selected research articles.

Paper Selection:

Papers will be chosen based on their relevance, innovation, and potential to spark insightful discussions among DSWB community members. The selected papers will be announced to the community at least two weeks prior to each meeting, allowing ample time for review and preparation.

Presentation:

A volunteer member from the leading Pathfinder Team will deliver a concise overview of the chosen paper (under 10 minutes), emphasising key findings, methodologies, and conclusions. Presenters are encouraged to pose open questions and discussion prompts, and to highlight the paper’s relevance to DSWB’s objectives.

We ran a trial session in April, presentation slides for which can be found on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/10777730.

Open Discussion:

Following the presentation, the session will transition into a facilitated open discussion. All participants are encouraged to share their perspectives, ask questions, and engage in a constructive dialogue. The discussion should focus on practical examples, potential use cases, strategies for adoption, and recommendations for applying AI and data science methods within our work.

Encouraging Team-Level Journal Clubs

The Journal Club offers an excellent opportunity to deepen our understanding of specific topics, refine our communication skills, and actively contribute to the intellectual growth of our teams. We hope that the DSWB Journal Club will inspire members, particularly Early Career Researchers, to organise similar sessions within their own teams and among their peers.

Resources

To ensure the success and maximise the value of our Journal Club, we encourage both organisers and participants to consult the following resources:

References
  1. Phung, D., Colón-González, F. J., Weinberger, D. M., Bui, V., Nghiem, S., Chu, C., Phung, H., Sinh Vu, N., Doan, Q.-V., Hashizume, M., Lau, C. L., Reid, S., Phan, L. T., Tran, D. N., Pham, C. T., Do, K. Q., & Dubrow, R. (2025). Advancing adoptability and sustainability of digital prediction tools for climate-sensitive infectious disease prevention and control. Nature Communications, 16(1). 10.1038/s41467-025-56826-6
  2. Lonsdale, A., Sietsma Penington, J., Rice, T., Walker, M., & Dashnow, H. (2016). Ten Simple Rules for a Bioinformatics Journal Club. PLOS Computational Biology, 12(1), e1004526. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004526
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