Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Announcing Friday Irtiqa journal Club

by Salman Hameed

One of the best things in graduate school was journal club. This was the best way to keep up to date with the literature. The idea behind journal club was to pick a paper from research literature and then have a discussion of the findings amongst faculty and students. I have been meaning to start a similar thing on this blog for a while. I know that the audience on this blog, like elsewhere on the blogosphere, varies a lot in professional and academic backgrounds. The journal articles are usually aimed at other academics (including graduate students) working in the field. But of course, everyone is welcome to chime in on the paper - but preferably after reading the paper (or at least after skimming the paper).

What kind of papers will be picked? Well, of course, there will be a bias towards topics that are often presented at Irtiqa (well - this should definitely match your interests, since you are reading this blog). I will announce the title of the journal paper on Wednesday Friday (1 week before) and will provide a link to the journal. There is a good chance that you will need a electronic library access to read the paper. If you can't find the paper and are interested in reading it, send me an e-mail, and I will send you the pdf. If this becomes too odious, I may provide the pdf for couple of days directly on the blog - but I don't want to run afoul of (serious) copyright violations.

These things take some time to get into a rhythm. I will start it up this coming Friday (I know it is a bit soon) and will highlight some of the key results from a journal paper. I also want to plug for an excellent blog, Epiphenom, that regularly provides excellent summaries of journal papers related to science and religion.

What is on for this coming Friday? Well, I thought we will start with issues of science and religion in the Muslim world. So lets talk about a recent paper that addresses the views of Egyptian science teachers:
Science Teachers' Views of Science and Religion vs. the Islamic Perspective: Conflicting or Compatible? by Nasser Mansour (Science Education, Volume 95, Issue 2, pages 281–309, March 2011).

6 comments:

Snuze said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Snuze said...

Yay! I was tasked to coordinate the Journal Club when I was doing my MSc because the other students were afraid of me, hehehe. I liked that it was a way for me to learn new things without expanding much effort but others saw it as troublesome. Hehe.

Anyhoo, I'm looking forward to this and hope to get to participate. Thank you and thanks also for the rec!

Naveed said...

This is a really good idea Salman. Will try to read the paper and contribute to the discussion.

Mohammad Jawwad said...

Great idea! Very excited about it. I suggest that a more interactive forum like facebook is used. A new group with the name "Friday Irtiqa Journal Club" perhaps.

Salman Hameed said...

Thanks - looking forward to it.

Jawwad:
Good idea. But lets start it here. Irtiqa is also on Facebook, and, if need be, we can also have a conversation there. I will keep the idea of a separate FB group in mind.

Mohammad Jawwad said...

@Salman

Could you be kind enough to email me a copy. Many thanks in advance.

Jawad

Mohammed.jawwad@gmail.com

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