Critical Reading & Reflection Sheet for Journal Club Papers

A guide to move beyond summaries and toward analysis, critique, and application.

0. Overall Summary

  • Provide a concise summary of the paper in your own words (max 200 words).
  • You may use ChatGPT or another AI tool to generate an initial draft — but then mark in bold or comment what you added, changed, or disagreed with.
  • What did the AI summary miss, oversimplify, or misrepresent?

1. Background & Context

  • What prior knowledge is essential to fully understand this paper?
  • Which parts of the introduction did you find most unclear or assumed too much background? Why?
  • If you asked ChatGPT or another AI tool to explain background terms, how accurate or useful was it? Where did it fail?

2. Aim(s) of the Paper

  • Summarize the aim(s) of the paper in your own words (max 3 sentences).
  • Critical reflection: Did the experiments and analyses actually match the stated aims? Point out any mismatch or “scope creep.”

3. Methods

  • Summary: List the main methods used in the paper in 2–3 sentences.
  • Which methodological choices were most crucial for the conclusions?
  • Could alternative methods have been used, and what would have been the trade-offs?
  • If you used AI to explain a method, what nuance or detail did the AI miss that you only understood by reading deeper?

4. Results

  • Summary: Briefly summarize the key results in 3–4 sentences.
  • For one figure of your choice, re-explain it as if you were teaching it to a peer who hasn’t read the paper.
  • Which result surprised you, or challenged your expectations? Why?
  • Did the authors overinterpret any result, in your view?

5. Applications & Impact

  • Who benefits most from this study (scientists, clinicians, industry, society)?
  • Can you think of an application beyond what the authors suggest?
  • How would the field change if these results turned out to be wrong?

6. Limitations & Open Questions

  • What limitation acknowledged by the authors do you consider most serious? Why?
  • Identify a limitation not discussed in the paper.
  • What experiment or follow-up study would you propose to address these limitations?

7. Your Perspective

  • Did reading this paper change how you think about your own research, or about the field more broadly?
  • If you asked AI to generate a critique of this paper, how does your own critique differ? (Be specific.)
  • What was the most difficult part of this paper for you to understand — and how did you work through it?