In addition, these journal clubs help improve the students' critical thinking skills of understanding and debating current topics of active interest in their field.
Traditionally, journal clubs have met weekly or monthly to discuss current research in a topic relevant to the field.
An analysis of one hundred publications describing and evaluating journal clubs found that they are most effective if they have a clearly identified leader and have an established purpose that all articles can be linked to.
Recently journal clubs have begun to take advantage of Twitter allowing geographically diverse groups to participate in a single discussion.
The earliest references to a journal club was found in a book of memoirs and letters by the late Sir James Paget, a British surgeon, who describes a group at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in the mid-19th century as "a kind of club ... a small room over a baker's shop near the Hospital-gate where we could sit and read the journals.
The original purpose of Osler's journal club was "for the purchase and distribution of periodicals to which he could ill afford to subscribe.