Deadline approaching for Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research proposals
Purdue undergraduate researchers have through Feb. 15 to submit article proposals for the 2012 volume of the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research.
All undergraduate researchers affiliated with Purdue are eligible to submit a proposal with the permission of their faculty research advisors. The JPUR Faculty Advisory Board strongly encourages student researchers in the humanities and social sciences to submit proposals so the journal can reflect the breadth of undergraduate research activity at the University.
The online submission process at www.jpur.org consists of three simple steps: completing an author agreement (students retain the copyright), entering information about the author(s) and faculty advisors, and submitting a 200-500 word abstract describing the research project. All abstracts will be reviewed by Purdue faculty members before the JPUR Faculty Advisory Board decides which authors will be invited to expand their abstract into a 2,500-word article and which projects will be presented as a 250-word "research snapshot."
In 2011, the inaugural year of publication, seven articles were published in JPUR, representing a 16 percent acceptance rate -- equivalent to that rate in many disciplinary journals.
The aim of JPUR, which is financially supported by the Office of the Provost, is to highlight the best undergraduate research from the more than 2,000 projects conducted at Purdue every year. Authors of accepted articles are coached in writing techniques by instructors from Purdue Libraries and the Online Writing Lab. The students also are paired with members of the JPUR Student Editorial Board, who help to make the research presented is accessible to a broader audience. Each article is edited and the presentation designed by students with substantial support from Purdue University Press and the Office of Marketing and Media.
"Our aim is to present research at a level equivalent to Scientific American," said Charles Watkinson, director of Purdue University Press. "We try to help student authors articulate the importance of their research to the broader community, and use design techniques to make the work as accessible as possible, but without dumbing down the content."
More than 8,000 printed copies of the first volume of JPUR were circulated in 2011, and several thousand additional readers accessed the journal online, where it is freely accessible at www.jpur.org. Copies were distributed to alumni and potential employers as well as students and faculty, and publicity materials promoting the work of the student authors were sent to 20,000 recipients.
"I am looking forward to some more really interesting articles in JPUR 2012 that showcase the great opportunities for undergraduate research at Purdue," says Dale Whittaker, vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs. "I want the second issue, like the first, to raise awareness of and celebrate the really amazing creativity and discipline of our undergraduate students."
