Undergraduate research journals on campus are giving a younger set of UW-Madison academics opportunities to publish research, previously only offered to graduate-level students.
Illumination, the journal for humanities-related content, is publishing its second issue at the end of April. According to Editor-in-Chief Adam Blackbourn, the upcoming issue will contain approximately 10 poems, three short stories, three essays, three articles and 15 to 20 artists, publishing about 34 students.
Applications can be filed online at the Illumination website, but Blackbourn warns that getting published is not an easy task.
Last year we had about 500 submissions, and altogether between this year and last we got over 1,000 submissions, and a lot of those submissions are extremely high quality,\ Blackbourn said. ""It's extremely competitive.""
Illumination is also sponsoring several programs to give more students chances to share their work. According to Blackbourn, these programs include poetry readings, an art gallery in College Library and increasing publication of Illumination to once a semester.
Alternatively, the Wisconsin Undergraduate Journal of Science, or ""WISCI,"" provides an opportunity for scientific content to receive peer reviewing and publication.
""The overall goal [is] to see that undergraduate research students who are putting a lot of time in … get the opportunity to experience the peer-review process, since in the scientific community it's a very large part of your possible graduate education,"" said WISCI Graphics and Layout Editor Brent Ramaker.
The application process for WISCI is digital, via their website.
However, unlike Illumination, WISCI has not had much luck thus far in garnering student submissions, something Mark Anderson, co-director of public relations for WISCI, blames on the journal's relative newness.
""It just really hasn't caught on yet,"" he said. ""We're all optimistic; it's just hard to get the ball rolling.""
WISCI was hoping, according to Ramaker, to receive 11 to 12 submissions of approximately three to four pages in length, so that a full journal of roughly 50 pages could be published. In light of receiving fewer, the forthcoming iteration will only be online, appearing sometime within the next few weeks.
However, according to Anderson, this is only temporary, and WISCI plans to publish and circulate further editions each semester.
Regardless of the success of either WISCI or Illumination, Blackbourn believes publication of his journal is important not only to represent individual students, but also to represent the campus as a whole.
""Most of what parents hear and [people outside the campus hear] are the bad things that happen, all the drinking, all the crimes."" Blackbourn said. ""[Illumination] is something to put a really nice, positive image on what's going on at the student level here.""
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