To all who may be interested, we are launching a monthly Journal club to dive deeper into aquatic animal welfare science. Whether you're a past workshop participant, researcher, current student or simply curious about this topic, please read on for more details:

The Journal Club sessions will be led by Dr Timothy Wiese who is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling. Tim completed his Phd in 2023 on “Safeguarding the welfare of Scottish farmed Atlantic salmon: current practices and future prospects”. To complement his academic expertise, Tim can also draw on his practical experience of working as a fish farmer in the UK carp industry. View his presentation on “Conceptual Frameworks for Aquatic Animal Welfare” as a general introduction to the topic. The journal club with provide the chance to share key papers in the field and engage in extended discussions around the most pressing topics of animal welfare science.

Due to the great amount of engagement from participants during our workshops in Thailand and Vietnam in June 2024, we realised that we have a window of opportunity here to not only keep the spirited discussion around animal welfare science going, but to dive deeper into the subject matter with everyone who is interested. 

The aim of this journal club is that, by the end of the year, participants will not only have a comprehensive understanding of aquatic animal welfare science and its unique relevance / importance to industry and academia, but also how to incorporate it into their research when appropriate. Papers will be shared ~2-3 weeks ahead of the meeting, giving ample time for everyone to read and think about the paper’s quality of research questions, methodology, analysis and interpretation, and finally what contributions it provides to animal welfare science.

Participants are encouraged to post at least 1 comment or question about the paper well in advance of the meeting itself, either to help clarify any points on the paper or to help get the conversation started. The Journal Club discussion itself will take place over Teams, and will run for 1 hour (20 mins allocated for Tim to elaborate on the relevance/importance of the paper chosen and its strengths/weaknesses, 20 minutes to explore 2-3 of the best comments/questions raised in the forum ahead of the meeting (anyone is welcome to add their own points during this time), and the final 20 minutes for a Q&A, where any further elaborations / points that people may want to explore can be done here). While these 1-hour sessions will be in English, we hope that written posts can be made in Thai & Vietnamese, along with translations provided in and around the monthly meetings.

A round-off discussion about the broader topic at play will then continue on the Teams forum after the Journal club meeting, partly to help lead onto the following paper for the next month. Throughout the entirety of this Journal club running, additional reading will be suggested, and anyone is also welcome to suggest any other papers they find (provided they explain its relevance). For those interested in joining, please follow the link below to provide your details so that we can send you an invite to the Teams group. While participation each month is voluntary, we strongly encourage you to try joining each meeting or at least follow the discussions in the forum.

For those interested, please click the link below to provide your details for participating in the Journal club, where we will then email you individual invitation links for joining the Teams group.