Thanks for viewing the video about our work with the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI)! While JEI has been around for over 10 years, we're just starting our research into the impact that the program has on young scientist identity, belonging, and understanding of science. We are interested in a few things (two of which we list but also happy to extend the conversation beyond these):

1. If you are working with students who are doing research, we would love to have them submit their research to JEI. Definitely reach out if you have questions or want to consider integrating the writing process in student research projects.

2. We are interested in feedback/thoughts on assessment of the student participants, particularly in the area of understanding science inquiry and the role of disciplinary literacy skills (reading, writing, peer-review, and publication) in science inquiry. Currently we are administering a set of surveys when students first submit a paper and then again when their paper is published; our survey instrument is derived from elements of the PITS survey (Hanauer, et al 2016) as well as self-designed questions regarding perceptions of disciplinary literacy. 

Thanks for taking the time to look at our work, and we look forward to the conversation!

Check out all the student papers here: www.emerginginvestigators.org 

I can't believe I haven't heard of this incredible journal sooner! Thank you for this video and for the work you have been doing.

You seem to already be asking and seeking answers to important questions around assessing the impact of the journal process on emerging scientists. There are a few areas I'm particularly curious about:

Where does student impetus for submitting to the journal come from, and what difference does this make? For instance, what if submitting to the journal is a class-wide project?

Most journal processes often involve a lot of revision, and also often result in something not ultimately being published. How often is "rejection" a part of the JEI process, and how is that handled. If rejection is not an outcome, what does that mean in terms of students' understanding of the larger process of peer-reviewed science?

This is awesome! Talk about a risk-free process of learning about the academic publication journey from an early age. This is fantastic! I voted!!

Really like your orientation to including youth in all phases of the science process and thought that the stages in one of your last pictures - from students defining the problem to interpreting and communicating the results resonated with what some are now referring to as civic or community science - i.e., members of the local community own the science. In the final phase of our project there is a student forum that involves hundreds of students from schools across the region where each team of students presents in a public way what they did and learned. not only do the students get great positive public feedback but - because they hear from fellow students they never met - they gain a sense of being part of a larger movement of people using science for public good. However, although they are emerging investigators, they don't do science in the typical way that journals publish.

Amazing idea. Is there such a journal for college freshman.

In our STEM summer academy which went virtual thanks to COVID and even before that we found that having students just create and do short presentations each day about what they learned had a profound effect on their engagement in the program. Knowing they would have to present and wanting to do good presentations they were more enthusiastic and engaged. I can only imagine the impact of actually publishing and the learning as they go through the process.

This is an amazing project! I was wondering how are you recruiting the students, and also the reviewers?

Hi Meltem,

Thanks for viewing our video. The Journal has a network of 200 grad and post-doctoral students who volunteer to review student submissions. They all participate in our review certification process and must pass a test. We recruit volunteers from a variety of universities throughout the United States.

Students find us by searching, through their classroom teacher and referrals from other students. Last year we received over 500 student submissions. Of the students who followed the entire process, we published over 150 student articles. You can see them here https://emerginginvestigators.org/articles.

Thank you!!

Scott Soldat-Valenzuela
Executive Director

I am really glad to learn about this journal and of course to hear about the study. Authentic experiences are so critical to building and nuturing interest in science. You mentioned that you have a network of 200+ reviewers and with a 10 year track record must receive a fairly substantial number of submissions. How many submissions do you receive on average and do you collect demographic information on your authors? 

What a great video.  I like how you are exposing students early to learning that there's a process for getting their work published.

What a wonderful idea and important (but rare) learning experience you are providing for students! This is so exciting. We have been working with high school students doing mentored research, and when we asked them about the science practices and experiences they had in their mentored research, almost half of them reported having regular opportunities to share their learnings at an academic conference or to present their work to an audience, which surprised us. I will have to look back at our data and see what we asked about writing results...I'm not sure we specifically asked that. This opportunity to publish, for a wide group of students, with mentored experiences around revision and feedback, is so important as a way to complete that full experience of mentored research. I will be telling my colleagues about this, and urging them to see the video! 

Very interesting idea - and your data sounds quite promising on its impact. It seems that better understanding the peer review process also could lend itself to a deeper understanding of the role of consensus and community in scientific knowledge production which could contribute to trust in science, and appropriate skepticism when warranted.  Do you have data that speaks to participants' relationships to science in their everyday lives?  For example, how they consume and share science?  How do they use it to make decisions?  (Particularly from those participants who did not go on to pursue careers in science.)  Great work!  

This is a wonderful opportunity for middle and high school students! How do secondary schools/educators typically learn about this opportunity? 

 Wow, this is amazing!  Passing on to all of the middle and high school teachers in my network.

This is such a wonderful project and I'm kinda ashamed that I wasn't aware of it earlier (!). 
I have many questions and would love to have a conversation if you are at all interested: We have an 'open science' platform to support students in their own human behavior studies (www.mindhive.science). We have a peer review environment where students provide anonymous feedback to study proposals generated by students from other schools (preregistered report 'light' so to speak ;) and we would love to know more about your 'lessons learned' and discuss a possible collaboration/integration!

Thank you! And please reach out to us to chat about lessons learned and a possible collaboration: Sarah.fankhauser@emory.edu. Looking forward to hearing from you!