Group Spotlight: Pub and Papers

Pub and Papers is an ongoing monthly journal club to discuss recent scientific journal papers in the field of non-invasive neuroimaging, especially for clinical applications. They have been meeting since August 2023. Hear from postdocs Deepshikha Acharya and Liam Collins-Jones about why they started the journal club and how their community has grown over the last two years.

Why a neuroimaging journal club?

Cambridge has various labs spanning over 7 departments that work with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and other non-invasive neuroimaging techniques. Before Pub and Papers there was no forum for labs to interact and collaborate.

Journal clubs really facilitate discussions and encourage participants to learn about the latest developments in a field. For inter-departmental journal clubs like ours, it is also the cornerstone for collaborations. The setting of a pub for journal club provides an informal venue to enable open discussion across all participants from professors to undergraduate students.

What are the events like?

For each meeting, we assign a moderator who picks the date, pub, and paper for discussion. The group then comes together to have a discussion on the chosen scientific paper with no formal presentation requirements from the moderator.

The meetings have been a lot of fun and have led to great conversations, collaborations, and ideas about future spin-off events. Our journal club group currently spans over 20 participants from 7 different departments across the University of Cambridge. 

I hope these journal clubs have helped people find a group to talk about their research and debug queries, as well as explore current research outside their specific field. I also hope these events have helped people become better science communicators and appreciate its importance when addressing a diverse group.

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What's Next for Pub and Papers?

These meetings have generally helped lay a foundation, especially amongst trainees, of an inter-departmental collaborative space to discuss neuroimaging research, experimental designs and collaborate on research. We are currently also working on a few standalone event ideas, such as hackathons and outreach, to reach more people.

This includes the Cambridge multimodal imaging neuroscience data (MIND) hackathon, that will take place at West Hub from 28 to 29 April 2025 (registration open soon), and the the fNIRS UK 2025 conference that will take place at Magdalene College from 18 to 19 September 2025.

We continue to organise these meetings monthly and we really hope the informal setting of a pub encourages more people to join in on the discussions, even if they are just curious about neuroimaging and want to learn more!

We would also really like to thank the EngBio IRC for sponsoring many a pub chips and lemonades to help break the ice and bring the Pub and Papers group to the level of collaborative camaraderie it is at today.