After a successful inaugural issue in February 2014, the University of Saskatchewan Undergraduate Research Journal is scheduled to return for its second volume during the 2014–15 academic year.

The USURJ is an online publication made up of research papers written by undergraduates students. Curated by a group of U of S students, the articles are put through a double-blind review process before being distributed via the project’s website. Each submission is looked over by a set of two professors or individuals from a related field, specifically chosen because they have no prior relationship with the work, with all identifiable data removed so as to prevent any conflicts of interest.

The journal is available for anyone to read once completed and can be used as a resource for future research at a university level.

Anyone either currently enrolled in undergraduate studies or is no more than one year post-convocation is encouraged to submit. Papers are accepted from any area of study, with the editorial team intending to include three submissions from each overarching discipline — fine arts and humanities, the social sciences as well as health sciences — in the final product.

Though he acknowledged that the first issue had its growing pains, graduate editor-in-chief Cale Passmore couldn’t be more pleased with the result.

“We were… very happy, even a bit surprised, with the level of submissions that we were receiving. It’s a phenomena in the publishing industry to send work out to reviewers that are usually quite critical and they come back saying ‘no revisions required,’” Passmore said. “That already happened with one of our submissions from both reviewers, so it’s like we have our hands in some really rich, smart work.”

Passmore, who works alongside a large and varied staff of editors who volunteer their time to help bring the USURJ together, has been with the project since its inception and is proud of the journal’s achievements thus far.

“It’s already been quite well received,” Passmore said of the USURJ. “It’s been seen as the U of S participating in what’s an ongoing up-and-coming trend supporting undergrad research, since that’s taking place nationwide. But very few university institutions are co-opting that sort of model and we’re also one of the first so we’re providing that push for it.”

Passmore said that creating the USURJ’s first issue was a learning exercise, but that the experience allowed returning staff to come back more confident in the tools at their disposal. As a result, those involved are focusing on fine-tuning the process for its second year.

“It was a wild and hairy first issue,” Passmore said. “But we learned the lessons we needed to from that and it’s actually just been tweaking, and now we’re in the process of… trying to see how big of an impact we can make with it — so working in collaboration with the Women’s Centre, Aboriginal centre, a lot of community populations to try and get people aware of [the USURJ] and allowing the graduates to have that voice and be as big a megaphone for them as we can.”

Funders for the USURJ include the university’s vice-president of research the University Learning Centre and the University of Calgary Press. It also has support from the U of S English, humanities and fine arts departments as well as the university’s Digital Research Centre. What funds are available are allotted as necessary to areas such as postering, the services of experts and related event-planning. Costs are kept down by the vast majority of staff members working on a volunteer basis and by foregoing a print copy of the journal and focusing on online publication.

“Paperless was the big debate — everyone likes to hold that finished product. But I saw [online publication] as being more financially feasible since we are somewhat underfunded,” Passmore said. “It allows for so much larger access.”

Victoria Cowan, who holds an honours degree in English from the U of S and is currently pursuing her Master’s in the subject at the University of British Columbia, had her paper Reading and Resisting Representations of Black Africans in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness published in the USURJ’s first volume. Saying that being published in the journal was helpful when applying for graduate schools and funding agencies, Cowan was pleased with the submission process.

“I found the submission and publication process to be relatively easy and painless. The feedback I received on my paper was incredibly in-depth, illuminating and not overly terrifying — though there were a few instances where I was wondering what I had gotten myself into,” Cowan wrote in an email to the Sheaf. “Fortunately, the editors at USURJ were extremely accommodating with my busy schedule and gave me extra time to submit my paper with its revisions.”

Though some may be concerned about the quality of work in a journal made up entirely of undergraduate writing, Passmore emphasized that the result was more than worthy of standing beside other academic publications.

“It’s important to stress that [the USURJ] is an institutionally recognized journal and that these papers are actually being made available to a larger international academic community. There’s some serious lack of confidence going on with undergraduate research. People are thinking, ‘I wrote this paper for a class, there’s no way that it would be good enough to be frozen in the annals of time,’” Passmore said. “If the last issue showed us anything, it’s that the submissions for this upcoming issue are strong enough, are smart enough, are forward-thinking enough to deserve to participate in that community.

“It’s turned out to be some of the strongest papers we’ve seen.”

The second volume of the USURJ is tentatively scheduled to be published in March 2015. Those interested in submitting to the journal can visit usask.ca/urj. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 30.