Synthesising the evidence during the pandemic: students and early career researchers rise to the challenge
24 September 2020
Shortly after the University went into lockdown in March, students, post-docs and early career researchers across the School of Medicine produced the first edition of the COVID-19 community journal club.
The journal club, which has just shared its 18th edition, was set up to summarise and review the enormous volume of information coming out day-by-day, primarily to support the clinical and research endeavours of local clinicians and scientists.
As well as being appreciated by colleagues at the School of Medicine, Cardiff & Vale and Velindre Hospitals, it has been shared with the Intensive Care Society and (on request), with the teams of Matt Hancock (who particularly wanted to know about T-cells) and the Welsh Assembly Government.
Moreover, the journal club has been part of discussions, hosted by the Association of Physicians, which highlighted different publishing models including the pros and cons of preprint servers and how we, as a community of scientists can help ensure that the most reliable science is disseminated and shared as quickly as possible.
The Cardiff team has now merged with a similarly minded team at Oxford University; the merged teams are working together to consolidate their encyclopaedic COVID-19 knowledge to produce and publish “live” reviews in a new Oxford University Press journal called Open Immunology.
On the merged digest, Professor Paul Moss, leading a UK-wide, UKRI-funded consortium (including Cardiff) on the immunopathology of COVID-19, commented “I think these are superb – by far the best available and really high quality!”
Well done all for rising to the COVID-19 challenge.
