Interest in student peer-reviewed open-access journals is beginning to grow. Our presentation will explore what it takes to produce such a journal and what it delivers in terms of student experience. We begin with an overview of the value of student research. We will also address student involvement in the Scholarly Communication process, as presented in ACRL’s publication Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy.

We will look at three OA peer-reviewed student journals. For each, we will learn the motivations to create such publications and how faculty advisors and editors determine their audience. Questions will include: breadth (regional, national, international); structure and process of the journal; how editors and peer-reviewers are chosen and their work evaluated; what are the criteria for articles; what is the acceptance rate; what is the peer-edit process; are peer reviewers trained and, if so, how; how much oversight do faculty advisors have; and how much time do student editors and peer reviewers spend per week.

More subjectively, we will find out what the benefits are for student editors and peer reviewers; the sustainability of a student peer-reviewed journal; what improvements would they would make, and what advice they would give to others. The three journals we will highlight are:

Undergraduate Economic Review, Illinois Wesleyan University

Tapestries: Interwoven Voices of Local and Global Identities, Macalester College

Illuminare: A Student Journal in Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Studies, Indiana University