{"doi":"10.1002/jev2.70214","title":"Five Years of EVClub—From Journal Club to Worldwide Discussion Hub","abstract":"A ‘journal club’ is a group meeting in which interested parties critically evaluate recent scientific literature in a specific field. Although the term was mentioned as early as the mid-1800s (Topf et al. 2017), the first journal clubs as we know them were organized by Sir William Osler at McGill University in Montreal in 1875, encouraging collective reading of subscription journals to counter the prohibitively high cost of printed journals (Linzer 1987). In 1889, Osler was appointed Physician-in-Chief at the newly founded Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he laid the foundations for modern medical education, of which journal clubs were a part (National Library of Medicine n.d.). Today, journal clubs have been adopted by institutions around the world and often involve trainees presenting peer-reviewed journal articles or preprints, followed by a discussion of methodology, findings and implications, guided by mentors. The process provides distinct educational benefits, including enhanced critical thinking skills, a deeper understanding of research methodology and greater awareness of research practices (Balamurali et al. 2024; McGlacken-Byrne et al. 2020). Since the onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, online or virtual journal clubs have increased in number, facilitated by advances in social media and digital technology. Unlimited by place, online journal clubs can maintain community interactions, enable knowledge sharing, and advance research globally. The ‘Extracellular Vesicle Club’ (EVClub) grew out of a monthly microRNA and EV lunchtime journal club that Kenneth Witwer had founded with several other researchers at Johns Hopkins University in 2013. In March 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, Dr. Witwer converted the journal club into a weekly worldwide virtual event. Interested parties could (and still may) sign up for the mailing list (see https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EVClubISEV) to receive login details. After moving online, EVClub grew into a global platform to discuss research and published articles, often including discussions with the authors themselves. In April 2021, EVClub was endorsed by the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV). After a temporary hiatus beginning in February 2024, in October 2024, the EVClub made its return as a bi-weekly gathering, with a ‘regular’ session every first Wednesday and a Special Interest Group session, either from Genitourinary System EVs (GUSEV) or Extracellular Vesicles in Nervous Systems (EViNS), every third Wednesday. Most meetings were recorded and can be rewatched anytime on ISEV's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@ExtracellularVesicleClub). After 5 years of EVClub, it is time to assess the balance. What types of papers were featured, and from which journals? In which geographical chapter were the presenters based? How many people viewed the live and recorded sessions? And is EVClub still relevant? The following analysis covers the approximately 5-year period from the founding of EVClub in March 2020 until June 2025, when this editorial was written. Of 194 regular EVClubs as of June 2025, most involved one or more authors sharing their own peer-reviewed publications, pre-prints, or, more rarely, preliminary research findings. In 14 sessions, a presenter shared the work of another group. Approximately 190 papers have been presented on EVClub. Most EVClubs featured only one paper (171), while 12 included two or more papers. One session, in May 2023, featured seven groups studying exercise-induced EVs. At least 15 EVClubs have consisted of topical lectures or discussions instead of focusing on specific publications or preprints. EVClub has showcased research from around 70 journals or preprint servers. The most frequent source of papers is ISEV's Journal of Extracellular Vesicles (JEV), with nearly one-third of the total papers (62). JEV is followed in volume by Nature Communications (7) and Cell (7), ISEV's Journ","journal":"Journal of Extracellular Vesicles","year":2025,"id":585363,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9488,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":510551,"name":"Tom A. P. Driedonks","orcid":"0000-0003-0928-9712","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1036247,"name":"Ana Cláudia Torrecilhas","orcid":"0000-0001-5724-2199","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":215735,"name":"Kenneth W. Witwer","orcid":"0000-0003-1664-4233","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":294130,"name":"Matilde Alique","orcid":"0000-0002-7912-1133","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":5,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:20.067334Z","pmid":"41392553","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}