Points of View: Should Students Be Encouraged To Publish Their Research in Student-Run Publications?

RESEARCH manuscripts should be considered the final step of a research project and are often the only tangible products of that research. Manuscripts are written to report and to advance discovery, and one measure of the impact of a research project is the use that others make of that project in their own work.

Anyone who is considering a career in research should experience this final step, which includes writing, reviewing, and editing research manuscripts. Yet these important aspects of research are often omitted from the undergraduate research experience. The Journal of Young Investigators (JYI), as well as many other undergraduate-only research publications, aims “to introduce students to the exercise of communicating their research, reviewing and being reviewed by peers, and the other aspects of publishing and disseminating scientific information. When these JYI authors and editors become professionals, they will be informed and experienced in issues concerning scientific publishing and will be effective communicators and reviewers” (from the JYI Mission Statement [ http://www.jyi.org/aboutJYI/mission.html]).This is certainly a laudable mission, and I have no doubt that working with JYI as an author or staff member is a remarkable learning experience for the student, offering an unusual opportunity for undergraduates to learn (with mentoring from their faculty advisors) how to assess a research manuscript and how to offer constructive advice to their peers. That said, I question the need to segregate undergraduate research into undergraduate-only journals. With 6,000 journals in science, technology, and medicine—and 24,000 peer reviewed journals overall—the advantage to the reader of a journal devoted to undergraduate research is not obvious.

Research submissions in JYI “are judged according to several criteria having to do with the quality and originality of the research and the manuscript's presentation and communication style” (from JYI submissions FAQ [ http://www.jyi.org/submissions/faq.html]). Thus, the standard for publication does not seem distinct from many other peer-reviewed journals. Indeed, in reading some of the articles published by JYI, I came to the conclusion that most if not all of these articles could have been published in more standard publications, and indeed many are superior to some of the articles I have read in journals I have assessed as part of my work as a member of the Literature Selection Committee of the National Library of Medicine, the group that recommends which journals are to be indexed by Medline. So I couldn't help wondering what the inducement would be for these authors to publish in an undergraduate-only publication. Perhaps there is the sense that if the work is tagged “done by an undergraduate,” it would be looked at with a more generous eye than it might be otherwise. But perhaps the work will never be read, because readers might make the assumption that the work isn't worth reading, as it would otherwise be found in one of the more traditional journals.

Many standard peer-reviewed journals appear in indices used by the relevant fields (e.g., PubMed for biomedical research), making it easy for other researchers to find and use the research manuscript. JYI, on the other hand, is not indexed (by PubMed at least), greatly decreasing the possibility that other researchers working on similar problems will access and use the research published in JYI.

Reviewing papers for JYI limits the experience of undergraduates to work done by their peer group. This renders the experience somewhat artificial, as one important experience young investigators surely need is how to be critical of work done by their seniors.

Often, work done by undergraduates is a piece of a larger project done by another more senior person in the lab. As such, that work might be included in a more substantial paper that could be published in a journal with a higher perceived quality than JYI, but the undergraduate would be left as a middle author in a piece recognized to belong primarily to someone else. Which should the undergraduate do? Should she publish her own piece in JYI (or another journal) or take middle authorship in a more substantial piece? Might editors also look with a kind eye on undergraduate-only research and allow her to do both?

The answer to that final question is an unqualified “no.” Certainly researchers of all ages are placed in that predicament regularly, and must choose between a relatively minor contribution that is hers alone and a more major contribution that is shared with others. Once a researcher chooses that first option, be it in JYI or BBRC, she can't then go and publish it as part of another work and pretend that the work has not been published before. If undergraduates choose to publish their work in an undergraduate-only journal, they need to treat that paper as a“ real” publication. Thus, even though the result is not highly accessible (although I am thrilled that access to JYI is free), publishing in JYI will limit the abilities to republish that work again as part of a larger story in a more standard journal. Publishing is publishing, and most journals set the standard that they will only consider work that has not previously been published. By all means, the larger work can and should cite the undergraduate's JYI paper, but cannot republish the data in that paper as if it is original and offer authorship to the undergraduate of the larger piece.

One of the wonderful things about research is that it is remarkably nonagist. Great discoveries can be made by a researcher just starting her or his career, while others are made by those late in life. Can you imagine Francis Crick or Sydney Brenner publishing their work in the Journal of Old Investigators? Should those papers only be reviewed by other“ old investigators?”

My advice to undergraduates is therefore this: make JYI a journal of issues relevant to undergraduate researchers. Fill it with essays about lab etiquette, the art of reviewing, how to choose a graduate school, news, and features. But publish articles that detail your undergraduate research in the standard literature—there are many homes available for you to do this, many of them indexed by Medline and available for the scientific community through PubMed. Your work will be cited by the larger papers published by other people in your lab, demonstrating that your work had an impact. And ask your mentor for experience reviewing research manuscripts, not just of other undergraduates but of all your colleagues.