Publishing undergraduate research: linking teaching and research through a dedicated peer reviewed open access journal

In 2015, the University of Huddersfield Press launched Fields: the journal of Huddersfield student research. The journal was developed with two key purposes: ensuring that high quality student research was made available to a broader audience and inspiring students to work to the highest standards by considering the potential of their work for impact in the wider world. The existing literature is reviewed regarding the growth of student research journals, as well as some of the benefits these journals can offer to students. The institutional rationale for Fields is outlined and the process of setting up a multidisciplinary open access student research journal is discussed. The outcomes of an evaluation are presented with particular focus to lessons learned and future developments to improve support for authors. The experience of the project team will be useful to universities and university presses considering strategies for supporting students to develop research for publication/dissemination.


Introduction
The University of Huddersfield is a medium sized university in the north of England.
Currently home to approximately 22,000 students, the University was named Times Higher Education University of Year in 2013. In 2015, Fields: the journal of Huddersfield student research was developed with two key purposes: ensuring that high quality student research was made available to a broader audience and inspiring students to work to the very highest standards by considering the potential of their work for impact in the wider world.
In this paper the authors present a review of the existing literature around the growth of student research journals in the UK/US, as well as covering some of the benefits these journals can offer to students. The rationale for Fields in an institutional context is outlined and the process of setting up an online, open access, multidisciplinary journal for student research is then discussed, with particular consideration given to a rigorous review process and a dissemination strategy. Year one of the project, which saw the journal go from proposal to fully fledged publication, is analysed and lessons learned are discussed. It is hoped that the experience of the project team will be useful to other universities and university presses considering strategies for supporting students to develop their research for publication/dissemination.

The growth of student research journals
The focus on the publication of undergraduate research and the associated development of undergraduate journals can be linked to a push for integrating research into teaching. In the United States, one of the catalysts for this was the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in a Research University, formed in 1995 on the understanding that undergraduate education had significantly changed. The Commission outlined ten ways to change undergraduate education, including a recommendation to link communication skills and course work.
'Every university graduate should understand that no idea is fully formed until it can be communicated, and that the organization required for writing and speaking is part of the thought process that enables one to understand material fully. Dissemination of results is an essential and integral part of the research process, which means that training in research cannot be considered complete without training in effective communication. Skills of analysis, clear explanation of complicated materials, brevity, and lucidity should be the hallmarks of communication in every course.' 1 Following Boyer, Katkin 2 reported that around one third of US institutions had at least one web based or print journal for undergraduate research. However, in a later survey, Lopatto 3 found that 'professional presentation', such as presentations at professional meetings or publication in peer-reviewed journals, were less common, representing only 8% of all presentation types. A little over ten years on, the Council on Undergraduate Research 4

now lists 170 journals in the United
States.
In the UK, Walkington and Jenkins 5 suggested that, '[u]ndergraduate research findings are rarely disseminated or subject to feedback and comment from a broad audience. For example, the UK undergraduate dissertation is often only read by the student supervisor and the assessors,' and at the time this represented a gap in the research cycle. The implication here is that the research cycle is completed when results are shared via publication and peer review and this may lead to further questions and comments, whereas student feedback on assignments is limited and does not benefit from the subsequent refining and re-drafting required for the publication process which closes the research loop 6 . Indeed this echoes the call from the Boyer Commission in the United States and is also being realized by many students in the science disciplines 7 .
Walkington and Jenkins 8 proposed nine strategies for mainstreaming undergraduate research publication by building publication into dissertation, course or programme requirements, this work was subsequently used to assess a number of case studies 9 before being updated and enhanced by Walkington 10 .
In the UK the 'new wave' of undergraduate journals began in 2008 11 . Tatalovic 12  titles -26 excluding the title discussed in this article. Of these, 10 appear to be archived and one forthcoming, therefore there still seem to be relatively few student research journals in the UK since the original list was compiled.
In a 2008 investigation of student science journals in the United States and Europe 15 , it was found that student research journals fell in to two distinct groups: those that were started by students and those that were started by faculty or departments. This appears to be true today 16 , indeed the BCUR website lists 10 academic led, 13 student led (with varying levels of academic involvement) and 3 with no information. In addition, many of the titles above have been developed as marketing opportunities for universities or departments rather than peer reviewed research journals. Again, of the 26 titles, the BCUR site lists 16 titles that are peer reviewed (by a mixture of academics only, academics and students and students only) and 10 titles that are non-peer reviewed showcase titles. In a survey of political science journals 17 , two thirds of respondents had student editors. Although 77% of the journal had a faculty advisor, only 11% of those who replied had responsibility primarily resting with faculty.
Of the titles listed at BCUR, only three active titles appear to be peer reviewed by academics and these are discipline specific titles published by Oxford University Press, British Undergraduate Philosophy Society and British Undergraduate Ophthalmology Society. The only university-based interdisciplinary title that is peer reviewed exclusively by academics appears to have been dormant since 2012. It was noted that many of the journals in the Tatalovic 18 study only featured the best undergraduate work, however, this is what differentiates fully peer reviewed student research journals from the titles that perform a marketing function.
While the numbers of student research output and dedicated journals are increasing relatively slowly in the UK, Caprio 19  Benefits to students Gilbert 28 considers that if undergraduate research is good enough to be published, it should be published in a 'real' journal, however, this argument is contested by Walkington 29 . Studies have shown a number of benefits to students writing for publication. Students found that their writing skills were seen to improve due to the back and forth nature of writing for publication, correcting grammar and style, which had not been done as part of the assignment submission process 30 . This opportunity to improve writing skills in the 'low risk environment' of undergraduate research journals was cited by the editor in chief of the journal of young investigators, a student-led initiative to broaden the undergraduate scientific experience 31 . A survey of 20 students required to submit articles to IMPULSE, the online neuroscience journal for undergraduates, found that the process played a positive role in the laboratory work and that the students felt that they retained more information 32 .
Tan 33 found that there were benefits in the relationship between students and research advisors; students experienced mentoring and this fostered their professional growth by refining written communication skills. Reviewer feedback was highly valued by students, indeed, some students found this feedback more useful than that for assignments 34 , while the act of writing for publication, rather than writing assignments, 'encourages students to do their very best work and take on projects that go above and beyond the typical undergraduate paper.' 35 This view has also been supported by a 2013 report from the UK Higher Education Academy 36 , which cited 'going public' with students as a way to raise the quality of students work as they understood that their peers, academics and professionals would read the work. Walkington 37 concurs, stating that publication enhanced students' credibility and standing with peers.
Employability is also cited as another benefit of student research journals as it can be a useful addition to a graduate's C.V. 38, 39 . One student who published with Bioscience Horizons Students at Oxford Brookes University reported a very positive experience, including a sense of achievement, heightened understanding of the research and a sense of ownership. One comment from the module evaluation was, 'Because you are trying to find evidence that compliments/contradicts your own finding, I found myself reading a far greater number of journals/books' 41 and another comment from the study on students submitting to IMPULSE, 'Knowing that we would be submitting to IMPULSE made me take greater care in my research and preparation. I read more background information…' 42 . This ties in with research in the UK, Australia and the United States 43,44,45 , which has shown that there is a link between undergraduate e-resource usage and attainment and retention. Research at the University of Michigan has shown that retention rates for students who participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, which included research presentations and journal article publication, were improved, particularly amongst African American students 46 .
It appears that there is a difference of opinion as to whether student research journals actually advance research. Tatalovic  cited. This may depend on the type of student research journal and as more student research journals are launched, this area warrants further investigation. Many undergraduate journals use student reviewers, often postgraduate students, and Gilbert 50 questions whether quality control might raise questions with those who may want to cite the article. There is certainly a question of quality control regarding the desire to disseminate all work 'warts and all' 51 versus the quality of the work 52 . Luck et al 53 describes the review process for the journal Bioscience Horizons as being the equivalent to a 'normal' journal, that is, to use two reviewers to guarantee quality articles and for rejection to be common, although often awkward.
Creating a publication that adhered to the standards of a 'normal' journal was a key concern when developing the process for setting up a student research journal at Huddersfield. The desire to close the research loop by bringing together teaching and research to allow students to contribute to the academic output of the University 54 was also a contributing factor to the process.

Why set up a new student research journal at Huddersfield?
The literature shows that the process of preparing and repurposing work for submission challenges students to strive for the highest academic standards of quality and originality, as well as giving them valuable experience of the publishing process. This is an asset if they go on to pursue a career in academia, but also in many practice areas requiring employees to be active in their specialist areas in terms of research and publication. The process from initial submission, through peer review and on to final publication, offers multiple opportunities for feedback and discussion and provides students with the opportunity to work closely with members of academic staff who have a wealth of research and publishing experience to draw upon.
Bearing the above drivers in mind, the idea for a student research journal at Huddersfield aimed to provide a supportive learning environment for students, which was challenging but at the same time promoted a positive developmental experience. The journal also had to align closely with a number of University strategies.
The University of Huddersfield published a new Teaching and Learning Strategy in 2013. The strategy described six enabling strands, the first of which referred to students as researchers. By publishing a journal of student research as part of this strand it was hoped to encourage students to aspire to the highest quality of academic work and to view their work in the context of a research environment. The University Teaching and Learning Strategy is linked closely with the overarching University Strategy, which is framed around stakeholders, aims and enablers. It explicitly states that, as key stakeholders, our students can expect: • An education that challenges and creates excellent career opportunities • To learn from staff at the leading edge of knowledge and application • High quality physical and supportive learning environments 55 Implementing and developing a student research journal addresses each of these key areas. This is captured in the journal's main aims and objectives: • Showcase work that demonstrates significance, rigour and high standards of research It was important to have a combination of experience covering the subject areas, but also academic publishing experience from an editorial and publisher perspective. The original process timeline, based on existing frameworks for professional and academic publishing processes, predicted a ten month time period, this was later adjusted to a twelve month cycle with publication scheduled for January 2015 and is shown in Figure 1. The name Fields was decided upon after a competition and a logo designed by CLS. Once the name of the journal was decided, two marketing leaflets were produced to raise awareness with staff and students. Leaflets were given to School contacts to distribute and also handed out by the TALI project assistants to students.
Originally described as an undergraduate research journal, during the planning stage it was decided to include taught postgraduate students in order to create an opportunity for all taught courses at Huddersfield to submit papers.

Submission and review process
As part of the publication process, an editorial board was established and a process for peer reviewing the student submissions developed. For the first volume students did not submit directly to the journal, instead academic staff put forward student work that they considered to be of a high standard. For future volumes it is hoped that submissions may be initiated by students themselves or by staff who have supervised or marked work or by external examiners.
The first stage of selection of student work for the journal was undertaken by a School panel with a minimum of two members of academic staff who had a strong research background and expertise in teaching and learning. The role of these panels was to receive proposals and shortlist two or three pieces of work to be developed further over the summer by the students concerned. After the editorial board meeting, each subject area representative contacted students about the outcome and any required changes.

Communication and dissemination
The existence of a successful library publishing platform at the University of Huddersfield was the catalyst in the development of a student research journal and this platform is already embedded into the local academic culture 56 .
The  By providing a platform for taught students to publish their academic work, the journal is creating a pathway to impact for this work, ensuring that it is communicated to academic and practice communities. Particularly important for this to work is the decision to make the journal open access, as well as the implementation of a marketing and dissemination strategy.
Fields adheres to the standards laid out by the Press and as such, all articles are given DOIs (digital object identifiers) and authors are asked to sign a licence to publish, which assigns the right to first publication to the journal, but allows the author to maintain copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY). In addition, the peer review process is transparent and made available on the journal landing pages 60 . The press also requires that the editorial Board and peer reviewers are also made aware of the Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines 61 .
To ensure that the journal employs a pro-active stance on communication and The journal has received almost 500 full text downloads in the first 2 months after publication and these downloads have come from a number of countries around the world, which certainly shows the discoverability of using the HOAP platform.

Evaluation
As part of the pilot project, an evaluation of processes was undertaken. This consisted of meeting with all colleagues involved to discuss and review the process and sending a short survey to students whose work was submitted.

The submission process
Nineteen student submissions were selected by panels in the seven schools, students were then given feedback on how to develop the work to fit to the journal guidelines and standards. Two students did not complete the required revisions and were subsequently not put forward to be considered by the central editorial board. Following the initial peer review from the School panels, the Fields editorial board then decided that five student submissions did not fit with the scope of the journal. These were rejected and the authors were contacted. This meant that the first volume of Fields features twelve student papers.
Fields was created with guidelines that encouraged non-textual submission, particularly from the Schools of Art, Design and Architecture and Music, Humanities and Media, however, only two submissions were received and only one of these made it into the first volume. This was a disappointing outcome and the team would like to develop these types of submissions.

From submitted work to journal article
As expected, it was challenging for the students to rewrite their submissions and to get to grips with the requirements and terminology of the publishing process. One student commented that, 'It felt like quite a big jump, academically, from dissertation to journal article but the feedback helped a lot with that transition.' Student comments received supported the literature regarding the benefits of students getting' support from academic staff during the process 63 , for example, 'I thoroughly enjoyed the process and the opportunity to be a part of a published journal, the advice and journey of the first and second drafting experience to ensure a perfected end piece.
Additionally, it was a great first publishing experience as the University staff were very helpful, and although some of the process was confusing at the beginning, because it was the first time I had produced an extensive piece for a publication, it was a perfect process for learning. ' Another student commented, 'The feedback from the school panel was extremely helpful. It not only helped me re-write my submission but encouraged me to reflect on my work.' However, although a comprehensive set of notes for contributors were produced by the team, a review of the process revealed areas that needed to be more detailed. Student authors required more detailed guidance on many areas, including writing an abstract, what to add in an acknowledgement section, the format of figures and copyright of images. Indeed, the copy editing process revealed many unreferenced figures that needed to be further incorporated into the text or removed as appropriate, which should have been identified in the peer review process. A new revised set of notes has now been written and attached to the Fields web pages 64 .
Timing issues Walkington 65 found that, '[t]he time taken to get work to publication standard whilst students were preparing to leave, or had already left, the university was challenging', and that a number of articles were lost in this part of the process due to author's time commitments. Therefore it was key to ascertain whether students would be willing to commit to the additional work and if the student's supervisors would be available over the summer period. In some cases this led to a delay in decision making at School level. It is clear that a timeline with built in flexibility is necessary to a process that supports students with other commitments.
'I was very grateful for the flexibility with deadlines, as sometimes I had either my professional work to complete, or academic study.' However, one student highlighted that a more detailed timeline would have been helpful, '…I think I would have found a timeline useful so that I could see at the beginning when the various deadlines would occur (e.g. dates for first draft; revisions; final submission; minor amendments; publication). However, the deadlines set did allow sufficient time to produce the draft and subsequent revisions.' A bursary was made available in two instalments to support students in undertaking the required work to edit and rewrite their papers. Students selected by Schools at the first stage received the first instalment of £150 and the second instalment of £250 was awarded to students when they got to the second stage of the process and were put forward to the central editorial board.
All students who responded to the feedback survey supported the University offering a bursary to support them whilst rewriting. Four of the students said they would possibly have completed the work without a bursary but that it should be available to other students who would not be able to support themselves financially.
'The bursary was very important to me, as the article experience did take a lot of time to perfect, before submission and afterwards, and was able to support me during this time. The money did allow me more freedom to travel to various places such as libraries for study and better atmospheres to write in.' Another student remarked, '…the bursary was important and helped me rewrite my submission. It was used to purchase books to update references and specify terms.'

Impact of rejection
One of the submissions rejected at the editorial board level was from one of the highest achieving students in that year. They had worked closely with staff in terms of revising their work so there was concern that the student had left the University following a negative experience of the process. However, it should be noted that this particular student had difficulties cutting their dissertation down by more than a couple of hundred words, which highlights the issues for some in adapting work written for examination to become suitable for publication.
This was possibly a consequence of the submission process of the first year of the journal where students were selected rather than submitting themselves. This may have led to a misunderstanding that the journal would publish student dissertations in their entirety. Going forward, the central editorial board will emphasize to School contacts that they need to ensure the student understands that their work (or aspects of their work) has the potential to be developed into a journal article but that Fields does not publish full length dissertations.

Disciplinary considerations about authorship
An issue regarding authorship arose at the final editorial board meeting where the final selection of twelve articles was made. Guidance to the Schools had specified that all the Fields submissions were required to be student authored, however, some of the submissions from the sciences included joint staff and student authorship and in one case the student was not the lead author. After further investigation, it was discovered that this was due to the collaborative way much of the data in the papers was used. The School in question considered that student and staff co-authorship would be a more inclusive approach and one that better reflected current disciplinary practices. Although Walkington considers that co-authorship is a strategy that could be used 66 , when the board was consulted, most other disciplines considered that co-authored papers would be more appropriate for main stream journals and that any staff contribution for Fields should be noted in the acknowledgment section. In the above cases, after discussion with the academic co-authors, one paper was changed to a single author, one paper was accepted with joint authors and one paper was withdrawn.
Generally, most of the academic staff involved in Fields thought it needed to be clearly student work. For future volumes, Fields could consider a number of the areas of best practice set out by the student journal, Bioscience Horizons (see Table 1): Can the student's supervisor be named as an author on the manuscript?
Where appropriate the paper may contain multiple authors to reflect both the intellectual ideas and practical research contributions to the paper, but the student author should accept responsibility for the team.

Supposing the student or supervisor does not agree to the conditions or cannot meet the submission dates?
The conditions are not negotiable. The author and their supervisor/senior academic must agree to the conditions when submitting a manuscript for consideration by the Journal.

What is the supervisor's role?
The supervisor must agree to the submission of a manuscript to the Journal. The supervisor may advise the student but not re-write the manuscript. The supervisor may be a co-author on the paper, but the student must be named first and takes responsibility for the paper.

Lessons learned
Despite efforts made to communicate the aims and scope of the journal as well as the publisher requirements and author guidelines, there were issues with copyediting, writing style/structure, copyright and permissions which only came to light late on in the process cycle. It was felt that the majority of these issues stemmed from a lack of effective communication in terms of what was expected of student work at this level, and a lack of support in some areas to help the students with the conversion and repurposing of their work from dissertation level to academic article.
It was agreed that there are measures which could be considered for the next publication cycle to try and address these issues and further improve the experience for both staff and students who engage with the journal. This has already been partially addressed by a revised version of the notes for contributors' pages as discussed above.
In order to address issues around preparing students for the jump from dissertation writing to article writing, a writing workshop will be held to prepare the 2015 cohort. This will be based on the current retreat and workshops run by the School of Human and Health Sciences for their ongoing project developing a culture of publication, now in its third year, which has successfully re-purposed and published a number of masters' dissertations in academic journals 68 . This will provide a supportive space in which students can raise questions, as well as covering some key areas relating to publication including the importance of copyright and permissions. This will be an additional level of support for students and at the same time improve the level of work returned to the journal at the revision stage.
An option for further work at Huddersfield is to consider the adoption of a number of strategies put forward by Walkington and Jenkins 69 and subsequently extended by Walkington 70 regarding sustainability, specifically: • Strategy 1. Build publication into dissertation and honours-level requirements

Future plans and sustainability
Mariani 71 suggests that departments should think carefully about whether there are sufficient resources to enable the sustainability of student research journals and this is certainly something that needs to be considered going forwards. At the moment, Fields remains a strategic project and as such has central support and financing which is essential to maintaining the journal processes.
One way to do this would be to embed student research into the undergraduate curriculum 72 . This was not the case in the pilot year for Fields, indeed during the process of selecting titles, there was some support for the publication in 'traditional' scholarly journals from the sciences, which supports the arguments put forward by Gilbert 73 . However, Fields is becoming embedded by inclusion in the student module handbook and by the use of staff champions.
Caprio 74 raises concern that students will have little or no experience of writing for communication and builds on the concept of scaffolding 75 , e.g. using poster sessions, student conferences, blogs, wikis, multimedia objects and co-authored (student-faculty) papers to accompany student research journals. At Huddersfield there is some activity here, for example coauthored papers in the School and Human and Health Sciences 76 and a student research festival to promote, foster and enable students as researchers 77 , but this activity needs to continue and become more effectively joined up for future years.

Conclusion
This article has presented a review of and an update to the information about student research journals including a discussion of the benefits to students in developing their work for publication. The details of setting up Fields have been outlined together with an explanation of how developing the journal fitted into institutional teaching and learning as well as research strategies.
The benefits of a pre-existing online, open access publishing platform via the university press have also been discussed. The outcomes of an evaluation have been presented and particular focus has been given to important lessons learned and future developments to improve support for student authors.
The journal was officially launched on 17 February 2015 by the Pro Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning and included a number of presentations by the student authors. 78 Tan 79 concluded that although undergraduate students would start the experience of research insecure and fearful, they would end the endeavour experiencing fulfilment, and this certainly appears to be the case for one who spoke at the event and was later interviewed for the University's politics blog, Harold Wilson's Pipe, 'The experience of writing for the journal has certainly been a positive one. It has allowed me to develop publication skills, improve my academic work and take on board different perceptions and criticisms. The opportunity has also allowed me to revisit a piece of work that I am particularly proud of and present it to a wider audience.' 80 Volume 2 of Fields is now in the planning stage, with a publication date of early 2016.