Journal Lab is an application for discovering and commenting on research articles on PubMed. A live version of the site is hosted at:
The Journal Lab interface is built for academic researchers at a graduate student and post-doc level and is based on five core assumptions:
- Most working research biologists regularly read peer-reviewed papers on topics related to their field.
- When reading papers, these researchers often have insights about the data being presented.
- These insights are generally focused on individual figures rather than on sections of the text or on papers as a whole.
- Researchers will record these insights online if the process of doing so is easy, if they receive peer validation for their opinions, and if they bear no risk to their scientific reputation.
- Once organized and aggregrated online, these opinions will provide valuable metadata to anyone engaging with scientific research.
To this end, the Journal Lab platform provides researchers with:
- A faster and easier way to track relevant research on PubMed.
- A means to quickly scan figure level discussion on that paper.
- A means to easily contribute their own insights to that discussion without risking their academic reputation.
- A mechanism for their insights to be seen and recognized by peers in their field.
Contributions to the project or discussions about open science are welcome! Please ping me on twitter (@davidgljay) if you would like to be involved in any way.