Taking the reigns

In April 2014, Swapnil and I launched NephJC—and within weeks we were overwhelmed by the sheer work of running a twice-monthly, Twitter-based journal club. Fortunately, we also had a deep bench of friends on the internet. A rotating cast of brilliant volunteers stepped in, proving the old fortune-cookie wisdom true: many hands make light work.

Over the years, both Swap and I have taken on new responsibilities and new roles. Swap even has a big announcement on the horizon. As NephJC has grown, we’ve had to confront the hardest part of any grassroots digital project: succession. The good news is we’ve been spoiled with talent. Two exceptional leaders have been (not so) quietly steering the ship for the last 18–24 months, so much so that most of you won’t notice any change at all.

Today we’re making it official:

Your new Editors-in-Chief of NephJC are Brian Rifkin and Cristina Popa.

Both are highly decorated graduates from the NSMC. Brian won Rookie of the Year in 2021 and Cristina followed right behind him in 2022. She also tacked on the MVP award in 2024.

Swap and I will still be around, but less.

Introducing NephJC Shorts

In just over a decade of critical appraisal on NephJC, we have done several experiments. Some of them have worked out phenomenally well, such as the Freely Filtered podcast. Others were not ready for the time, such as the Google Hangouts. We want to try another such experiment, and hope we receive feedback to decide if this is something worthwhile that we should continue doing.

There are many studies and many trials and many reviews, and many guidelines that are published in Nephrology every week. Indeed, it is a golden era for randomized controlled trials in Nephrology. On the other hand, NephJC only occurs twice a month. It does take a lot of work, with the detailed critical appraisal, readable summary, visual, abstracts, and the chats. Sometimes the occasional, irregularly irregular podcast. Hence, we cannot deal with all the worthwhile studies that are coming out.

Enter NephJC Shorts. 

This week, we are publishing a few short blogs. The purpose here is to cover some notable studies in brief. They do not receive the full, long, NephJC treatment. The articles we choose are those that the NephJC editorial team fancies, but suggestions are welcome. Since these are a shorter format, we don’t do a deep dive into the methods and don’t have a long list of the limitations and strengths. Think of them as a pithy version of the usual NephJC blog. Feedback welcome! 

The NephJC Editors

NephJC Bookclub returns on August 19th

Here at NephJC we know that the summer is a hard time to focus on medical minutia, it is a time to find a comfortable chair and lose yourself in a book so for the 11th year we are doing a book rather than journal club chat. This summer our community is going to read John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis.

• Book homepage: EverythingIsTB.com

• NYT Book review

• Amazon link