Students, staff and faculty gathered in the Knight Library browsing room Monday afternoon to celebrate the second publishing of the Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal, a publication focused on highlighting excellence in undergraduate research at the University.
OUR Journal was started early last year with the first volume published on October 24, 2011. It incorporates works from all different areas of academia including literature, science, social sciences and the arts.
Lucy Gubbins, senior chief editor, is a founding member. She said that she strives to provide undergraduates with a platform in which they can publish their research and get recognized for superb work. As a senior, she will be handing off the torch to another chief editor this summer, but she is confident the publication will continue to flourish. @@http://journals.oregondigital.org/OURJ/about/editorialTeam@@
“We just want to empower the students. There is amazing research being produced at the University and not enough people know about it,” Gubbins said. “Another issue is that students don’t really know that it’s possible to do research, and it’s such a formative experience at the undergrad level.”
The Journal’s staff is as diverse as the topics it publishes. There are students from all various departments, and by no mistake. They use their diverse backgrounds in order to get fresh looks at each piece from all angles and mindsets of study.
“It’s a stepping stone for many people to really be able to enter the publishing world, and it’s much better than doing your term paper, setting it on a shelf and never looking at it again,” said Emily Balloun@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Emily*Balloun@@, linguistics editorial board member. “It’s really tough to decide which articles are going to be published but it’s very rewarding to see the finished product.”
The Journal is an open-access publication, meaning anyone can access the research at any time without a subscription. Gubbins and Balloun both spoke on the editorial process, explaining a rigorous procedure in which each piece considered for publication must be double-blind edited and approved by the editorial board on multiple levels.
Iida Pollanen, author of one of the published pieces on comparative literature, said that the work she did with OUR Journal gives her optimism for the future of her studies and research. @@http://journals.oregondigital.org/OURJ/issue/current/showToc@@
“I think the University of Oregon, as a whole, is very good at supporting undergraduate research and this journal is one of the examples of that,” Pollanen said. “It gives me more confidence for the future. If I can do this at the undergraduate level, I’m sure I can do it in the future.”