ChalkTalks-Physics@BITMesra

A scientific journal club is an opportunity for researchers with somewhat overlapping interests to come together and discuss selected ideas, usually a latest peer-reviewed paper (journal papers). It is especially encouraging for young researchers as it provides an ideal platform to broaden their acumen and draw inspiration from seemingly unrelated territories. It is, therefore, quite natural to organize journal club meetings amongst researchers belonging to a broad research area [for example, see here] .  Arguably the most notable journal club meetings is the condensed matter physics journal club where the central focus is to isolate and discuss the most significant peer-reviewed researches (4-5) in the past month. One could easily find several other similar formats of the journal club. 

Perhaps, most compelling arguments in favor of such a format for journal club meetings are: One, it is engaging as the content of the discussion is (directly) relevant to the members. Two,  it is easy to manage as the group is relatively small. Concurrently, experience dictates that the most of the journal club meetings die a natural death as the interest and enthusiasm dwindles over time irrespective of the format. Better put, everyone gets busy! The key to a successful year(s)-long run journal club meetings is to balance the trade-off between inclusiveness and maintaining interest together with some discipline.

Being a diverse academic fraternity with several distinct backgrounds, such as soft and condensed matter physics, high-energy physics, statistical physics, astrophysics, etc, it is, therefore, a daunting task to outline a single-point agenda for "our" journal club meetings. A rather pragmatic approach would be start slow, figure out where we are and where we would like to be. As a theoretical and computational physicist, my ideal is that even if the current discussion is "out of context" for me, I am able to draw examples from my field, "set up" the problem in a familiar language. Once that is done, a numerical solution is, in principle, conceivable. However, I am well-aware that this is not an easy task and likely more difficult for certain disciplines than others. 

Instead of setting up a lofty goal for the year, and to materialize the "slow start",  I believe that a shared vision to focus on discussions on certain key concepts from our research areas and singular take-home messages would be a good start. Our target should be to explain these ideas to colleagues and peers not from the field. At the same time, we would like it to be not too elementary and keep it at the level of Master's students. Sufficient prior reading material(s) should be provided too. Slowly and steadily, we should move on to journal papers papers on general topics (such as pertaining to Nobel lectures, foundations of quantum mechanics, etc.). Young researchers (listen up graduate students!) should also feel free to discuss their current unfinished projects especially if they would like a brainstorming sessions.* 

It would also be interesting to learn about the latest research from the department, and occasionally from external guests. Experienced speakers will be the much-needed role models. We are working on that. 

Perhaps we could learn how to best organize these meets.

Over time, we will grow; hopefully, not into this . . .