Earlier this year, I published a journal article with one of my Third Year project students which was based on data that the student obtained during her project. This project explored social psychological predictors of people’s willingness to get a COVID-19 vaccine (the data were gathered in late 2020/early 2021, when very few people in the UK were vaccinated). Specifically, we predicted that participants’ sense of belongingness to (or identification with) their local community would positively predict them endorsing the idea that they had a sense of duty to their community to get vaccinated, and that, in turn, this sense of duty would positively predict their intentions to get vaccinated. Happily, the data supported our predictions: you can read more about the research in a Conversation article I wrote.
Rather than write any more about this specific study, in this blog post I’m going to think more generally about the process of project students publishing their research with their project supervisor. Publishing student project research certainly has many advantages to both student and supervisor. For the student, the skill development gained from learning about the publication process (including how to write up research for publication, how to select a journal and how to submit a paper to it, how to cope with rejections from journals, and how to respond to reviewers’ comments) is invaluable if they wish to go into a career in academia. It also looks great to already have a publication when applying for postgraduate or doctoral study. The publication will also benefit the supervisor’s CV, but perhaps more importantly, it will provide evidence of their ability to supervise, encourage, and mentor students effectively.
Nonetheless, there are some potential pitfalls to publishing student research. Perhaps most notably, it is important that the supervisor ensures that the student has ownership of the project, and that they are making the key decisions (with the supervisor’s support and guidance, of course). This means that a supervisor should never push a student into a research project because they expect that a publication will come out of it: the student and supervisor need to work together to develop a project that the student is happy with. On the other hand, a student should not begin a project expecting that it will inevitably lead to a publication: generally, it is relatively unusual for student project research to be published.
“Unsurprisingly, many of the characteristics of a good student project report are also the characteristics of a piece of publishable research.”
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Keeping these potential issues in mind, what can students and their supervisors do if they wish to increase the chances of the student’s project being published? Unsurprisingly, many of the characteristics of a good student project report are also the characteristics of a piece of publishable research. These include:
- A clear rationale for the research, which means that the project is rooted firmly in relevant previous literature. The Introduction must make it clear to the reader what work has been done in this area before, and how the present study will build or expand upon this work in a meaningful way.
- A well-designed study which shows that the researchers have considered important procedural issues (e.g., how participants were selected and recruited; how the sample size was decided upon; whether to control for potentially important control variables, and how these were identified; how measures/materials were selected for use in the study, and where they were sourced, etc.)
- Appropriate selection and execution of analytic technique, and clear reporting of findings.
- A thoughtful Discussion section, where the researchers reflect on the wider implications of their findings, as well as considering strengths, limitations, future directions, and practical applications of their work.
After reading this, if a student is interested in trying to get their project published, what should they do? The first step is to speak to their project supervisor. The supervisor will be able to explore the possibility of publication with the student, and to think about potential next steps. Some journals specialise in publishing undergraduate research so this might be an option to consider, as well as the option of submitting the research to more mainstream journals in the topic area. The student will probably have to submit their research project before they can begin to collaborate with their supervisor on an article that is based on this research, so be aware that this may delay things (related to this, the student should make sure that they provide the supervisor with a non-university email address so that the supervisor can still contact the student after graduation). It is also important to have conversations about how the work will be divided up (e.g., who will write each section of the paper, who will do the proof-reading, who will fix the citations and references, etc.). Related to this, it is vital to discuss at an early point what the author order for the paper will be (generally in Psychology, the first author on a paper is the one who played the largest role in the work, and this can sometimes be hard to determine in student/supervisor collaborations, so an honest conversation about this is a must).
Finally, it should be noted that journal article rejection rates tend to be quite high, making rejection a likely outcome for many students’ work (it’s also often true for academics too!). Even if a paper is eventually accepted for publication, it is likely that peer-reviewers will ask for revisions to take place first. Whatever the outcome of the submission, the supervisor has an important role to play in helping the student by suggesting coping strategies and highlighting the next steps to take-these are key skills for the student to learn and develop.
So, to sum up, with a little planning and preparation from both student and supervisor, it is certainly possible for a student to submit their project research for publication. If you are a student who decides to submit their work, I wish you all the best, and hope you find it a useful learning experience!
About Juliet
Juliet is a member of the Social Identity research group, with the Groups, Identities, and Health research group. Juliet’s research interests lie within the domains of Social Identity Approach, and the implications of group membership for people’s everyday lives. And you can read Juliet’s previous article for us, about Sleep and the Social Cure.
A key strand of her research involves exploring help-giving and help-seeking from a social identity perspective, which includes contexts where helping transactions are problematic or stigmatised, such as foodbanks.
Psychology at Nottingham Trent University 