Although academic libraries are very good at promoting the virtues of peer review and open scholarship to undergraduate students, there remains the challenge of how to translate the concepts of open access and open education into tangible metaliteracy instruction and impactful student skill. One way to achieve this is by providing students with the opportunity to publish in scholarly journals.
Undergraduates publishing in journals that involve peer review and professional presentation is well established. The Council on Undergraduate Research lists numerous successful journals from around the world (Council on Undergraduate Research, 2021). Encouraging students to publish their work in collaboration with faculty and the library allows them to, 1) authentically communicate their work, 2) benefit from applied experiential learning by going through constructive academic review, resulting in improved work, 3) expose their work to a global audience and, 4) engage in knowledgeable debate about trends, issues and ethics in scholarly publishing. Critically, students are encouraged to put their best effort into their academic work. Getting involved in the process of publishing empowers individual academic agency in students, as well as raises the value of the university by showcasing the final, revised version of student academic and creative work (SFU Library, 2022).
In our proposed presentation, we will discuss the genesis of cujournal.ie and enhancing library-faculty partnerships through this initiative. How do we manage and operationally maintain the journal? What roles does DCU Library play as publisher of course-related journals? How can such journals meaningfully support metaliteracy instruction and inspire transition to open pedagogy?
References:
Council on Undergraduate Research (2021) Student Journals, Council on Undergraduate Research. Available at: https://www.cur.org/engage/undergraduate/journals/ (Accessed: 5 January 2023).
SFU Library (2022) Why publish a journal in your course?, Journal publishing options with SFU Library. Available at: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/publish/dp/publish-us (Accessed: 5 January 2023).