Higher Education in Review

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: The Promise and Pressures of Student-Run Academic Journals: Voices From the Field

Abstract

Higher Education in Review (HER) is an independent, refereed journal published by graduate students of the Higher Education Program at the Pennsylvania State University. It is the first student-run, peer-reviewed journal publishing on contemporary topics in higher education. Our mission is to make a substantive contribution to the higher education literature through the publication of high-quality research studies, scholarly papers, and literature reviews in areas related to the university, the four-year college, and the community college. In doing so, we provide graduate students first-hand experience with the publishing process. HER is distributed to over 30 higher education graduate programs nation-wide and is electronically available, free of charge, on our website. First authors must be currently enrolled graduate student or have written their manuscript while still in graduate school. Graduate students from a variety of disciplines and fields (e.g., education, sociology, economics, law, and psychology) are encouraged to submit their work for our consideration and submissions are accepted year-round.

In this presentation the current Editor and past Editor will discuss: (1) the importance of identifying your journal’s niche and (2) maintaining a high-quality journal while providing students with a positive, developmental experience.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of graduate students in programs across the country with interest in starting graduate student-run journals. This increase has provided scholars with growing options for venues to publish which has resulted with growing competition amongst journals to attract submissions appropriate to their publication’s mission. With over a decade of experience, we seek to provide guidance on the importance of strategic thinking and planning surrounding the development and implementation of a journal’s niche. Specifically, we will highlight how to work with multiple constituents, including authors, reviewers, professional organizations, and funders, and how those relationships mold/define our journal’s scope.

Second, we will discuss one of our journal’s most difficult dilemmas: balancing our mission to provide a positive, developmental experience for graduate students while maintaining a high-quality publication. Most of the graduate students who submit to our journal are pursuing their first or second publication and many as their first solo publication. Our aim is to provide constructive, detailed feedback to authors whether their submission is accepted or rejected. In doing so, it is our hope that authors gain feedback to encourage their growth as scholars in our field, gain understanding about the publication process, feel supported and encouraged to consider us for future publications, and are willing to promote our journal to other graduate student. Providing this level of feedback takes considerable time and effort on the part of editorial boards and reviewers and usually do not result in increased rates acceptance publications. As such, many journals choose to focus their time on other activities and give very little, or no, feedback to authors. In this session we will share how our editorial board has faced this dilemma and how those decisions have affected our Journal.

Authors

• Travis T. York, Valdosta State University

• Talia K. Carroll, The Pennsylvania State University