If you ever wanted to hear why faculty and students are excited about student journals, you’ll want to listen to the most recent Digital Commons Community Webinar. The webinar details how the Undergraduate Economic Review, an open-access student journal published in DigitalCommons@IWU, directly reinforces curricular goals and raises the quality of student work. Michael Seeborg, Robert S. Eckley Distinguished Professor of Economics at Illinois Wesleyan University, describes his role as co-advisor to the student team of editors at UER as one of the most satisfying parts of his job.
The results have been more than an outstanding journal—UER has a 20% acceptance rate and gets submissions from around the world including Great Britain, Asia, and Europe; its publication supports a core mission of the University which is excellence in teaching and learning. Professor Seeborg uses the journal in his capstone class to further specific curricular goals, with demonstrable success: Student Sijia Song, Editor-in-Chief of UER, speaks of his work on the journal as “an invaluable learning experience,” citing a dramatic improvement in critical thinking, communication, writing, and leadership skills.
Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Scholarly Communication Librarian at IWU and UER co-advisor, describes the repository’s role in cultivating the highest level of student scholarship. She emphasizes that learning about scholarly publishing furthers key skills and information literacy in undergraduate learning, while providing faculty a powerful pedagogical tool. Both advisors underlined the importance of having a good system in effect—workflows, publishing platform, and editor training in particular—which reduce the workload and allow students and faculty to focus on learning goals.
We encourage you to view this stirring webinar here: Building an Outstanding Student Research Journal in the IR.
For more on getting started with student work in your repository, see the Student Work resource library.
Undergraduate Economic Review – Economics Department – Illinois Wesleyan University