Journal club presentation: how to present a research paper

What the audience expects from a paper presentation

A talk about someone else's paper is judged on three things: whether you understood the question the authors asked, whether you can explain the method in plain words, and whether you can separate what is proven from what the authors assume. Retelling the abstract over five slides shows none of that.

So first write one sentence: “The authors tested whether …, using …, and found that …”. If it does not come together, reread the paper before starting the slides.

A 10-slide presentation structure

Ten slides are enough for 10–15 minutes. Each answers one question.

1. Title. Paper title, authors, journal, year, DOI. Your name and the occasion.
2. Context and question. What was known before this work and which gap the authors close. One reference to the key prior work.
3. Hypothesis or aim. In one sentence. If the authors list several aims, pick the main one.
4. Method. Study design, sample or data, key instrument. A diagram beats a paragraph.
5. Data. Where from, how much, how it was selected. A simplified version of the paper's characteristics table.
6. Result 1. The paper's main figure with your own conclusion as the slide title, not “Fig. 2”.
7. Result 2. The second important result or a robustness check. No more than one chart per slide.
8. Limitations. What the authors admit and what you noticed. This slide separates analysis from retelling.
9. Significance. What changes for the field and for your group. Which next experiment suggests itself.
10. Sources. The paper itself and 3–5 works you referred to, with DOIs.

What to take from the paper and what to leave

• Take the result figures and the method diagram, but rewrite the captions: the slide title should state the conclusion.
• Do not copy whole tables. Keep the two or three rows that support your point; the rest goes into speaker notes.
• Quote numbers exactly, with units and confidence intervals if the paper gives them.
• Explain terminology on the Method slide, not along the way: the audience gets lost at the first unfamiliar word.
• Cite prior work from the paper's reference list: it shows you understand the context.

Speaker notes: where the details go

A good slide holds one claim and one illustration. Everything else, including definitions, extra numbers and references, lives in the speaker notes. That way you answer questions without leafing through the paper, and the slides stay readable from the back row.

For every substantive slide, keep in the notes the exact wording from the paper, the page or figure number and the DOI of the work you refer to.

Common mistakes

• Slides repeat the paper's “Introduction, Methods, Results” structure with no conclusions in the titles.
• The abstract is pasted in full and read from the screen.
• There is no limitations slide, so the first question stalls the talk.
• A figure from the paper is pasted with tiny labels and the original legend.
• No references: it is unclear what came from the paper and what was made up.

How to build this presentation in scid.ai

Open the paper by DOI on its scid.ai page and press “Make a presentation”. The paper goes into the chat sources and the prompt is filled in. scid.ai shows a slide plan, you adjust it with a message, then you get a PPTX with speaker notes and DOI references. You can add neighbouring works from the citation graph to the sources so that the Context slide rests on them.