When Alex Cheng and a few of his fellow undergraduate friends realized that they would not get a chance to share their summer research results with other students, they were disappointed. But instead of complaining, they decided to do something about it. And so was born JULS-the Journal of Undergraduate Life Sciences-with Cheng at the helm as editor-in-chief.
Each summer, many students across campus spend their break conducting and participating in research projects, often their first steps into professional research. Aside from the standard poster presentations at the end of the season, however, students generally have no other means to inform others of their work.
Cheng saw this as an opportunity to establish something new at U of T, though the idea of a journal for undergraduate science students is neither unique nor new. Prominent American universities, such as Columbia, Harvard and UC Berkeley, all boast undergraduate science research journals. In Canada, McGill is one of the few campuses to have such a publication. But while other universities’ journals cater to the sciences in general, JULS focuses on research in the life sciences.
“JULS is a unique publication that enables students to participate in the research process at all levels,” explained Cheng. “It gives students an opportunity to write about their own research-something that doesn’t often happen.”
The journal will publish research papers as well as review articles by undergraduate students. The inaugural issue will also feature several commentary articles by faculty members. According to Dr. Roy Baker, one of the journal’s faculty advisors, JULS presents an excellent opportunity for students.
“JULS is a very useful venue for undergrads to publish their research, thus acquiring experience both in experimental design and in the economy of scientific expression,” said Baker. “I feel the project is extremely worthwhile and has no equivalent at U of T, so it’s a worthwhile, novel concept.”
In order to maintain research standards and credibility in the scientific community, JULS is peer-reviewed. The journal chooses third- and fourth-year students as peer-reviewers based on their previous research experience.
“We’ve been fortunate to establish a collaboration with the U of T Library Journal Publishing System,” said Cheng. This collaboration allows authors to post their papers onto the library’s system, where reviewers can access and evaluate them before publication.
But how will a wholly undergraduate journal fare against graduate and faculty journals?
“JULS isn’t competing against these other journals,” he explained. “Just because a student’s work isn’t good enough for Nature or Science doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be published elsewhere. The [undergraduate] work is not of lower quality than other research. It’s just a different kind of research.”
For the full-time undergrad editors, JULS was a daunting mission from the start.
“We knew that it wasn’t a trivial task or project,” said Cheng. “We’ve been on a very tight schedule from the beginning and since, we’ve been learning and developing the journal as we go along.”
Luckily, there have been no major setbacks in their project in terms of funding and getting quality material.
“We’re confident that we’ll be on schedule for distribution in the first week of April,” said Cheng.
Another challenge for JULS has been the fact that a student’s research work is actually the intellectual property of his or her supervisor, since the work is done in a supervising professor’s lab.
“For research articles, students have to obtain the permission of their research supervisor, and the professor appears as an author on the paper,” said professor Corey Goldman, another of JULS’ faculty advisors. “It is respectfully acknowledged that some professors will not allow their students to publish for various reasons.”
For instance, a professor may wish to submit undergrad research to another peer-reviewed journal. Publishing research at another research journal, said Cheng, is a definite step up from JULS. All the same, Cheng is confident that JULS is set for longevity.
“Maybe, down the road, if there is enough interest and there are enough students to write for JULS, we can publish two issues per year.”
JULS will be the first undergraduate publication to join the ranks of U of T’s science research journals, which include Hypothesis. Originally started in 2002 by five graduate students in medical biophysics, Hypothesis publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts on a variety of topics, including opinions, news, scientific articles, and even an “away-from-the-bench” section that profiles scientists outside of the realm of science.
“[We were] trying to look for an official forum to discuss ideas we had about science,” said Karla Badger, a PhD candidate and one of the journal’s editors-in-chief. “We would regularly meet for coffee and talk about science but we wanted something more formal. If you have an idea about science and you want to share it and you want lots of people to hear about it rather than your five closest friends, then [Hypothesis] is a great place to do it.”
Because Hypothesis is based online, it receives submissions from all over the world, including the U.K. and India. According to Badger, the internet helped to expand this, initially, small journal.
Hypothesis has enjoyed notable success-for example, it is currently indexed on Google Scholar, a research article database-but there is still more its editors would like to accomplish. Badger said that they would like a broader readership base as well as more submissions, and hopes to be indexed on PubMed in the future.
Both Hypothesis and JULS are free and available at the St. George campus and online.
