Soil Science Journal Club

The text below is what I sent out to everyone in my Discipline a week ago. There wasn't an avalanche of interest but those who did want to participate seemed enthusiastic, which was encouraging.

An intention of the group was (at least eventually) to encourage our own writing efforts. Perhaps by being inspired by research and getting ideas into print, perhaps by some mysterious osmosis; I'm not sure. So there'll be more posts once we get going, hopefully next week if I can find a mutually convenient time.

"I have in mind running a Journal Club for interested postgraduate students and staff. I would like to focus on recent significant advances and developments in Soil Science, preferably including all subdisciplines (soil biology, soil chemistry, soil physics, pedology, ...).

Articles are likely to be sourced predominantly from premier / high-impact journals such as Science, Nature, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Earth and Planetary Science Reviews, etc. This isn't to say that we can't access the more traditional soils journals, but I'd like (at least at first) to focus on big-picture, high-impact issues.

It's likely that we'd meet fortnightly to discuss one or two articles of [hopefully] general interest. A key outcome will be to encourage all participants to develop a broader awareness of the context of soil-related research in the sciences, and thereby to promote a greater enthusiasm for research and science in general.

Two other things - I also intend to try and set up a journal club blog, at least to record our progress, and preferably to provide an ongoing resource. AND - it's well established that a journal club is best accompanied by coffee, so we'll try to accommodate that in some way too. It would be good to kick this off soon, so we can meet once or twice before the summer break."