Journal of Interdisciplinary Topics (JIST)

Whilst most undergraduate science programmes provide students with a project, through which they obtain some experience of the research process, few students get to know the mechanism by which research output reaches the public domain. Fewer still get to appreciate that the hard part of originality in science is to ask the right questions.

Our students learn about scientific publishing and the peer review process by acting as authors, referees, and editors of the undergraduate journal. The entire process is managed via professional grade free software supplied by Open Journal Systems, providing students with experience of the type of interface and management systems they will encounter when submitting papers to high impact journals such as Science or Nature.

Split into small research groups, the students identify an interesting scientific question or problem and then apply their existing scientific knowledge in a novel context by writing a short academic paper in response. This process encourages both creativity and a deeper understanding of the scientific concepts; there must be a core of accurate scientific theory that is communicated clearly. Students are particularly encouraged to produce mathematical models or exemplar calculations where possible in order to support their conclusions.  

Once a paper has been submitted it is sent out to other students on the module (with no connection to the paper) who act as referees. These students have an essential role as it is their duty to maintain the scientific standards of the journal by providing an independent check of the contents and ensuring that mistakes do not appear in any published papers. After reviewing a paper the referees are required to submit a brief written report to the student editorial board

which contains a brief critical analysis of the paper’s contents, constructive suggestions for changes and a recommendation on whether the paper should be accepted, rejected or sent back for further rewriting and review.

The student editorial board is crucial to the running of the journal as it is the responsibility of the board to assign referees (taking into account the balance of workloads across the year group), to consider referees reports and ultimately to decide whether a paper will be published. It is the job of the editorial board to provide guidance to authors and referees and to maintain the standards of the journal and in so doing they may overrule both referees and authors where necessary. All students sit on the journal’s editorial board multiple times and take on member, chair and secretarial roles.

The 2013-2014 academic volume was the first year that students from our exchange partner, McMaster University in Ontario, were invited to submit papers to the journal as part of their own studies and staff from both institutions agree that it was a resounding success. As far as we are aware this is the first time there has been an international collaboration in an undergraduate journal as part of an undergraduate degree.

The student experience is an accurate reflection of that of professional research scientists. Some of the more creative published papers have gone viral and have been seen on news sites as far and wide as France, Italy, Australia, China and Russia. This year a selection of papers were the subject of several radio interviews (BBC Wales, BBC Warwickshire, ABC Melbourne) and numerous media articles; they even got a mention on the BBC’s Have I Got News for You! 

Journal web site: https://physics.le.ac.uk/jist/index.php/JIST

JIST is a student journal, part of the Science in Context Module. Students:

• write short original papers• take it in turns to act as the editorial board• peer review the submitted papers• learn how science works

Accepted papers are published in the journal on-line. Hard copies are available from Lulu.com (an ‘on-demand’ print service).