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

RESEARCH is not complete until it is published. A science education is not complete until students fully participate in all aspects of professional scientific culture. This means they have to understand the values of the profession that they are joining. Although undergraduates are provided opportunities to recognize the importance of research, too often they fail to appreciate that research is not complete until it is published. Values of researchers necessarily include publishing, peer review, and priority, but these values are not part of textbook information, traditional labs, and mass lectures or accessible through passive learning. Occasionally, students are listed as co-authors of articles in professional journals, but typically they are credited for their work in the acknowledgments. Rarely are students fully involved in both the writing and peer review process. Full engagement and benefit in undergraduate research will not be realized until peer review and publication are standard expectations of these critical experiences.

Undergraduate research transforms many student lives (Splilich, 1997). The experience is an actualization of dreams, a “professionalizing” experience, and an opportunity to be an active contributor to the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, most students are excluded from three crucial components of research: (1) publication, (2) peer review, and (3) priority. This gap needs to be actively addressed by the membership and leadership of life science professional societies. If we want to be consistent with our initiatives in improving undergraduate education and to recognize the authentic success of those undergraduates who have actively participated in the research experiences we have promoted, support of peer-reviewed journals serving the undergraduate community is a logical extension of that commitment.

While institutional student research journals (such as the Beloit Biologist [over 20 years] and the Caltech Undergraduate Research Journal) have existed for a long time, there have not been many national opportunities for undergraduates enrolled in the majority of institutions. The most popular forum for students to present their work in a national context has been in student sessions of professional societies such as AAAS and through National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) ( http://www.ncur.org/). NCUR has existed since 1987 and specifically states three objectives relevant to student researchers:

1. Communicate and celebrate the results of mentor-student collaborations

2. Foster a multidisciplinary and multicultural community of researchers, scholars, and artists linked by a common enthusiasm for learning

3. Achieve its goals by sponsorship of an annual conference and by publishing proceedings of its conferences

The 18th annual NCUR meeting will be held at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN, April 15-17, 2004. The meeting provides an excellent forum for students to meet peers from many other institutions, present posters on their research, and, in roughly 500 out of 2,000 cases, to gain published recognition of their research. Although NCUR is not a research journal per se, the proceedings are published separately after the conference.

Some disciplines other than biology have offered opportunities for undergraduates to publish research. For example, the American Institute of Physics founded the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics as“ the journal” of the Society of Physics Students and its honor society, Sigma Pi Sigma in 1981. It is now available as The Online Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics ( http://www.jurp.org/). Unfortunately, biology students have not had such a forum or the support from professional societies. However, today, we have two excellent alternatives for direct participation in publishing undergraduate research. The American Journal of Undergraduate Research ( http://www.ajur.uni.edu/) is edited by Cliff Chancey (University of Northern Iowa). In the lead-off article in the current issue (2003), he states:

Primarily distributed as a hard-copy journal, the American Journal of Undergraduate Research also has sample issues available online in downloadable PDF. The editorial board has been drawn primarily from Project Kaleidoscope ( http://www.pkal.org) participants.

The Journal of Young Investigators (JYI) ( http://www.jyi.org) is an online journal that publishes original research, features, news, and views. It provides a forum for discussion of articles that are curated and archived. JYI is edited by undergraduates with mentoring from faculty and has been published for 7 years. JYI has had NSF funding and the editorial staff receives professional journalist press passes at AAAS annual meetings. Co-founder Andrew Medina-Marino states the need for such an initiative:

JYI began with a challenging idea. While doing research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Andrew Medina-Marino—a founding member of JYI and now a member of the Board of Trustees—wondered why undergraduate research was so invisible. Thousands of undergraduates engage in research through independent study projects, senior theses, and summer research programs, but the scientific community rarely sees the fruits of this work. This led Andrew to the age-old question asked by scientists: Why?

There is an irony here. Many researchers have reacted negatively to undergraduate research journals. Negative reactions are prevalent even among those who deeply value mentoring undergraduates in research in their own labs at R01 universities, large government labs, biotechnology companies, and elite research liberal arts colleges and who have added undergraduate researchers as co-authors of primary research journal articles. Reasons for this position have included three principle questions: (1) Shouldn't students seek to publish in “real” research journals, because they will not receive professional credit for these secondary publications? (2) Who will index and track research published in undergraduate research journals? and (3) With the rapid change-over in the undergraduate student population, how can such an endeavor be sustained, especially with consistent high quality? The implication is that student researchers can't be trusted to do the work of peer review and publication. How would these negative mentors respond to Seymour Papert's famous critique: “much of education is designed to infantilize students” (Papert, 1980)?

This “infantilizing” history is completely at odds with contemporary dynamics of undergraduate education. The majority of students enrolled in undergraduate education are adults (that is, 18 and older, with some large institutions having average age of undergraduates in the mid-30s), taxpayers, voters, work off-campus a significant amount, and contribute to our economy in many ways. Students are frequently involved in the governance of institutions of higher education, where participation ranges from service on committees such as curriculum policy and faculty hiring to membership on boards of trustees. However, while engagement in that important activity of scholarship—namely publishing—is encouraged in areas such as creative writing, it has been actively screened off from most undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. It is time to develop an adult model of science education that recognizes student creativity and productivity in hypothesis generation, experimentation, observation, analysis of results, publishing, and peer reviewing.

A second paradox of the antistudent research journal argument, especially by those who write about the importance of undergraduate research, is the willing abrogation of responsibility for mentoring students in a fuller spectrum of research that will strongly relate to their students' possibilities for professional success. However, the current landscape for participation in research is no longer limited to well-funded positions at elite institutions. For example, anyone with an Internet connection now has access to the rich data and powerful tools used in the analysis of molecular sequences and structures. The resulting challenge to educators is deciding how to engage students in biological problem solving and original research that makes use of these new resources in meaningful ways. Much of this research will be done at the teaching institutions where few of the mentors are regularly publishing their own work.

Thus, there are two problems faced by those of us who promote undergraduate research publication. First, many mentors of undergraduates involved in research may be reticent in promoting their students' efforts because they are intimidated or embarrassed by their own modest publication records. Second, many undergraduates in science are not confident about their writing. Hence, the arguments against their active publishing serve as another inhibitory factor, even when their own mentor may be encouraging them to submit their work for peer review. By democratizing the participation of research, use of the web, and widespread availability of sophisticated scientific and computational research equipment through miniaturization and mass production, anyone, anytime, anywhere will be able to conduct sophisticated research in short periods that would have taken years and massive resources in the past. We need to invite undergraduates to do research with us as colleagues and full participants in the diversity of scientific knowledge production; this includes publication.

How inviting are we as a professional community? If a student looks at our culture, is this one they will want to join? If we ask them not to publish as undergraduates, are we not sending the message that they are not going to be able to be full participants in our culture for a long time? The research community needs to change its feudal, hierarchical model of postponed adolescence, where you must go through 4 years of undergraduate education, 7 years of graduate school, 3 years of postdoctoral study, and 6 years of assistant professional development before obtaining recognition as a full professional. Furthermore, if a student looks at the structure of our profession, then she will see that a small minority of scientists are authors of most of the scientific literature, while many faculty never publish anything beyond their Ph.D. dissertation work. How might active participation in publishing and peer reviewing at the first stage of their career begin to change our culture? Whose interests are being served by perpetuating the current model?

While many of us await the official publication of the much heralded research of Elaine Seymour (2003) on the value of undergraduate research as seen from the eyes of students who have participated, let us consider two other available sources. First, in interviews of students actually involved in producing, funding, and writing an undergraduate research journal, the following benefits and challenges were identified:

1. Learn better what your peers are doing

2. Community is a crucial hub of common synergism

3. Begin to really know what you are doing

4. Learn the differences between professional and amateur reviews

5. Appreciate double blind processes

6. Make deadlines, organize, collaborate, and be responsible

7. Have a press pass that gives you differential access to pioneers

These students (“all overcommitted overachievers”) have done research with Nobel Laureates (e.g., Carl Wieman, who received the 2001 Nobel Prize for his research in atomic and molecular physics and is a progressive leader in physics education); obtained Marshall and Rhodes Scholarships for study in the U.K.; worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Company; held internships in Cairo, Egypt; taught in courses, workshops, and camps; and enjoyed the professional opportunities of being recognized as serious scholars.

Second, Audrey F. Manley (1998), President of Spellman College, has listed seven “Life Skills” that are gained through undergraduate research:

1. Mentoring that comes close with faculty

2. Experience with team work

3. Increased understanding of methodology

4. Improved study skills

5. Improved skills in time management

6. Increased self-confidence

7. Improved communication skills

As part of their local commitment, Spellman initiated the Spellman Science and Mathematics Journal because they saw it as crucial to“ not only make students better professionals, but also better citizens.” Could we ask for more?

We urge professional societies in the life sciences to strongly endorse undergraduate student research publication as a normative expectation of the undergraduate research experience.