Tuesday, March 2, 2010

JournalFire - An Online Journal Club?

While at school I started a geology journal club where we would get together once a week and discuss a short article. This is good practice for communicating an argument and defending that position. The one thing I learned early, is that you should pick a controversial paper to discuss - so you HAVE something to discuss. It's a really boring meeting when everyone sits around saying "yeah, good article" or "I agree with everything." Even with beer involved it's hard to generate discussion from a really good paper.

I bring up Journal Clubs because I came across a link to this product JournalFire. It is an online forum for posting what you are reading, what you think of it, and provides an opportunity for others to comment back and forth. An online journal club. I would still prefer the personal interaction that comes from a journal club meeting, but for those long distance colleagues that want to have that same sort of communication this looks like a great resource. Has anyone used this?

1 comment:

BrianR said...

I've never heard of that one ... but the concept is great. Would love to hear some testimonials of pros/cons from users.