 Hello friends, in this video, we are going to discuss about how to critique a journal for your journal club presentations. For any journal club, the objectives are going to be to understand the article, appreciate the good aspects of the article and critique the poor aspects of the article. That is the first objective. Secondly, we need to look at how can we improve our research work based on this journal article, whether some of the steps of the study can be replicated in our study setting. So, that is the second objective of the journal club. Then thirdly, the sole purpose of is not only to learn the knowledge content from the article. So, you need to look at the first two objectives of a journal club to have an effective journal club presentation. Let me take you through the terminologies which are related to the journal article. We need to know what is mean by library. Library means PubMed is a library for getting the journal articles. Google Scholar is one such, Sky Hub is a library which hacks all the paid journals and it will provide journal articles. Indexing means these are all the indexing agencies which helps in keeping the journals under their board. So, Medline is an indexing agency for PubMed. We have Science Citation Index, Expanded M-Base, Scopus, DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journals. These are the list of indexing agencies which is accepted by the recent NMC, that is the National Medical Commission of India. So, these indexing agencies are accepted. So, look for any journal articles under this indexing. Then what is the impact factor? Impact factor means it is the average number of citations which the journal articles in that journal produces, which is given by the formula. The total number of citations present in that journal divided by total number of journal articles published in that journal. Similarly, as impact factor tells about the quality of the journal, H-index and IE index tell about the quality of a authors. So, it is the number of average number of citations for the average number of publications. Then you should know about the rejection rate, turnaround time, all these are all the quality of the journals. Then you should know what is meant by a peer review process, that is nothing but after sending the journal articles to an editor, editor submitted to a reviewer for technical expert review. So, then they do a peer review process. They may either accept, reject or modify your article, give some key inputs. So that happens in a peer review process. So any journal which is peer reviewed is a basic standard for a journal. Then we need to understand what are all the types of studies in health research. The studies in health research are divided into these three components. One, it will be looking at the risk factors are studying the causality or the prevalence of the disease itself and where you get the diagnosis of the disease as a diagnostic test model and the intervention studies that is looking at the treatment aspect of the disease. So that is the effector. So these are all the types of study designs, either you will study the, what are all the risk factors causing the disease or you will study how you are going to diagnose the disease or how you are going to treat the disease. So basic as three aspects of the health research are this. Now we are moving into the journal article sections. What are all the journal article sections? So that is we have, we will start any journal article with title, with the authors below. Then we have an abstract keywords. Usually keywords are called as mesh terms that is medical, subject headings. Then you have introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion. This format of scientific writing is called as IMRAD style. IMRAD that is introduction, methodology, results and discussion. So followed by conclusion and references. These are all the key sections of an article. You have the other sections of the journal article with the conflict of interest mentioned and the source of funding mentioned, then the limitation, strengths and recommendations are also present in the sections of a journal article. Then before going into the journal club, we should ask ourselves certain question that should I read this article or not. To answer this precisely, we have three questions to answer. One is first you look at the title. Is it interesting or not? Answer yes or no. Then you look at the abstract. Then you conclude, will the conclusions, if at all it is valid, likely to be useful in your study settings or your clinical practice or your research areas? You need to answer yes or no for this. Then quickly browse through the materials and method sections. Then answer is it valid? The study findings are valid or not? You have to answer yes or no. And if the answers to question A, B and C are yes for two or more questions, then go ahead and start reading that article. So either interest, valid and usefulness, these three are the key terms here. So out of these three any two are present, then you should go ahead with that article. Then you start critically appraising the journal article. So in that you look at the title. This is usually an one-line description about the study and you should assess whether the title is specific or not, whether they have used the apt precise words to describe the title and the most important thing is whether they have used the picco acronym in the title or not and then you can suggest your better title for an article. That is how you learn manuscript writing. In the research question, I am going to explain what is this picco acronym? P stands for population. That is it should mention the population where the study has been done. Then intervention, I stands for intervention. What is the intervention or the experiment under the study? Then they should explain about the comparison group compared to a particular population. What is the effect or the outcome? So picco stands for population, intervention, comparison and outcome. The outcome is usually a disease or a disease prevention and usually they say instead of picco they say picot where t is the time. Now we are moving from title to abstract. So abstract is just a paragraph like a kind of a trailer for a movie. Entire movie is your entire article. This is just going to be a trailer. Watching a trailer, how the trailer create interest to see the movie, same way the abstract should create interest to read the entire article. At the same time you should understand the fact that it is the advertisement of the article as the trailer for a movie and it will tell a fast prospective reader that what are all the highlights of the study and the key findings of the study. So that will be conveyed in an abstract that you should remember and you should assess it clearly in that journal article. Then you should look for the keywords and the apt usage of that keywords in that study or not, whether anything has been missed out or not. Then you should move on to the core skeleton of this manuscript that is the Imrat style that is introduction. The ideal purpose of an introduction is to create interest about the topic. Then you should understand what is the nature and magnitude of the problem and they should have conveyed the fact that what is the current knowledge about this particular topic of concern that will be called as the review of literature which will be very extensive in case of a thesis or dissertation but it will be a paragraph in case of a journal article. Then you should address what are all the gaps which is present in the existing knowledge. Then it will automatically lead to the need or the justification for the study or the purpose of the study. Then you have to be clear with the objectives and the hypothesis. So you need to look at all these parameters are present in the introduction or not or what they have missed and you need to propose a better way of introduction for that journal article. Then we are moving to the materials and methods. These are all the headings, sub headings which should have been covered. Usually they should mention the study setting, study design, study tools, study period, study population, inclusion and exclusion criteria or the eligibility criteria, sample size, sampling methods, randomization statistics. So while assessing the methodology of the study we should look at both the internal validity and the external validity. Internal validity means how the study is accurate within itself. External validity is the accuracy of the study when it is extrapolated to the target population how accurate it is. So the internal validity is determined by these factors that is the study tool used and the role of bias involved in that study and the statistical analysis they have used. For external validity what is most important is the sample size and the sampling method or the representativeness and the randomization, the method by which they allocate the intervention to the study and the control group. Now for easily taking this method materials and methods you have a checklist approach based on the study type or the study design. So that will be available in your equatornetwork.org site which is concerned with enhancing the quality and transparency of health research. So you go into this site you look at the reporting guidelines based on the study designs the commonly used study designs the checklist based approach will be given here. If you click on this individual study designs you will get to know all common reporting guidelines and you can cross check or match this checklist and whether this checklist is satisfied in your journal article so that you need to check. So this is one such equator reporting guidelines decision tree where if you are not conclusive about the study design then you ask these questions and you arrive at a particular level and you use these guidelines it will direct you what study design you are using and what reporting guidelines you need to use. So the here is one such guidelines this is called a starred guidelines this is commonly used for any diagnostic studies. So if you look at the individual sections this is the checklist based approach here. So we have checklist for individual parameters present in that study. So you need to look at whether this is present or not and if it is present is it satisfactory or not that you need to answer in your journal article based on the checklist based approach this is from equator network. When we are looking at the results we should know whether the objectives are answered correctly or not whether the data analysis and the results are matching or answering your objective that is very important while looking at a journal article then when we are looking at the representation of the data you should see whether the descriptive statistics and the inferential statistics has been done properly and the table and the figures should be self-explanatory then there should be a right statistical test applied for this results and they would have mentioned about the significance correctly both the clinical significance and the statistical significance. The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth so any falsification or fabrication of the results should be identified when you are doing a journal article presentation for a journal club. Then finally you look at the discussion what is the purpose of discussion is you should look at whether the interpretation of the results has been done properly or not the biological possibility of this hypothesis has been discussed or not have they mentioned about the bias and the confounders or not or have they mentioned about the limitation and strengths of this study and whether the comparison of the studies have been done whether the results of the other studies has been compared with the study results and whether they have mentioned about the reasons for the differences and the similarities in spite of the differences in the study methodology and study location and whether they have mentioned the future directions and recommendations that you need to look at for any discussion then in finally in conclusion you need to look at whether they have answered their objective or not and finally they should mention after answering this objective what next so what has been answered or not so that that should be expected in a conclusion then finally we will look at the reference so you most commonly in medical health research we have journals websites and books as a reference so when we are looking at these references we should look at the look at and learn about different styles of references the most commonly used is the Van Gogh style which is again a numerical referencing we have other author date styling which one such example is the APA style Howard style is also the author date example author date type of reference so all these different types of references can be explored when we are doing a journal club presentation then you can look for any reference mismatch present or not then again what are all the simple rule of thumb for your journal club presentations is all the club members should have read the article at least once especially the bosses who are commanding the journal club presentation they should have read at least once so that is the first rule then the second rule never leave any topic without learning whenever you are coming across a journal article but let it be a statistical part or something about biological possibility explaining particular procedure never leave any topic when you are going through this journal article then the third and fourth while making the slides for your journal club presentation more than 50% of the slides should be on the article per se and less than 50% of the slides can be on about the topic about the journal about the authors and any other background information all combined should be less than 50% and more than 50% of the slides should be on the article per se the most common mistake while doing the journal club presentations is they take the article but they speak a lot about the topic that is 80% of their slides will be on this topic but ideal journal club presentation should have all these topics together for less than 50% only greater than 50% of the slides should be on the article so finally to sum up what are all the objectives of a journal club it is first to understand the article appreciate the good aspects critic the poor aspects secondly to improve our research work based on their research learnings from their research whether some of the steps of the study can be replicated in our study setting that should be our second objective and thirdly it is not to learn any knowledge content from that article so that is the objectives of journal club presentation and to take one single point out of this presentation will be to go into equator network dot org where you get checklist for maintaining the quality of all the different type of study designs where the reporting commonly used reporting guidelines will be available all the press all the best for your journal club presentation thank you very much for watching this video please like share and subscribe to my channel if you have any doubts and feedback please post in the comments thank you very much