The Official Blog of the Journal of European Psychology Students
Walking down the corridor of a dark, mysterious medical centre to find the empty waiting room on a cold January evening, I had many burning questions ready and waiting to jump from my notepad that I couldn’t wait to discover the answers to. I was waiting to carry out my first qualitative interview with Dr. Cole* for my undergraduate psychology research; little did I know the exciting journey that I was about to ignite …
Nick Shockey, the Director of the Right to Research Coalition which EFPSA joined in 2011, hosted a workshop for psychology students attending the annual EFPSA Congress in Denmark last week. The workshop was attended by over 30 congress participants including the newly elected EFPSA President, Dalya Samur. It covered topics ranging from what Open Access is to how students can get involved in advocating Open Access at their universities and national and international organizations.
Since the workshop provoked great interest among the participants of the congress, we decided to make an interview* with Nick on the topic of open access journals and advocacy of open access, and what does all that mean to psychology students.
*Special thanks to Lorenz Jaeger, EFPSA’s European Summer School Junior Coordinator, for leading this interview with me.
It’s a common knowledge that a good topic is not a very extensively studied one – research should bring new information to science. Still, how to find out what topics are worth to study and what not? Check out the tips by Dr. Konrad Janowski from Department of Clinical Psychology in Lublin, Poland.
The people with the most thorough and the most comprehensive insight into the world of scientific publishing in psychology are probably the editors of the many scientific journals. These are the people involved in every part of the way of a manuscript becoming a published article. From the first technical review when a manuscript is received, through the peer-review and to the final touches in layout editing, the editors take part in the process. This is why we have decided to include interviews with peer-reviewed journal editors to the JEPS Bulletin. The first in this series of interviews will be the one with Dr. Renata Franc, a researcher at the Ivo Pilar Institute for Social Sciences in Zagreb, who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for General Social Issues.
Dr. Franc offers comments and suggestions on how to write compelling and top quality scientific papers, with this advice aimed especially for students who are usually new to the whole idea of publishing their work in journals. If you hope to someday publish a scientific article, or you wish to improve your writing, you will find the following interview with dr. Franc more than useful!
Why is open access the future of scientific publishing? Martin Uhl, a former researcher at ZPID (Leibniz-Institute for Psychology Information), introduces the concept. The reason to start with this topic is simple: JEPS supports the idea of open access and therefore all articles published in JEPS are freely available on the internet everywhere in the world without any charge (other than what you pay for your internet connection, of course). Read about the philosophy that many scientists are fascinated about, but so far only few follow.
Writing scientific texts is inevitable in Academia. Publishing good articles is a crucial factor in one’s scientific career. Nevertheless, the students often concentrate on what to write, rather than how to write. This blog is launched to help students to become acquainted with the latter.
The JEPS Bulletin will elaborate on many different aspects of writing and publishing. First, we introduce you to the authors’ experience starring students who have published in JEPS or somewhere else, so that they could share their endeavour with you. Of course, we then cannot neglect the opinions of the reviewers, who undoubtedly gain many insights having read tens or hundreds of manuscripts before they have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Read more about their insights under reviewer’s experiences.
Having had a sneak peak into all those experiences, you will probably feel inspired to go for it yourself. At this point we will take you by the hand and guide you through the process of writing a scientific text providing all the information you would need to produce a high standard scientific text of your own. We aim underpin all the important points, and to further enhance your practical knowledge on writing techniques, structure, dos and don’ts etc. Furthermore, we will demonstrate to you a full manuscript analysis of different texts written by other students and analysed by experienced reviewers. Naturally we cannot overlook the APA manual (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). We’ll look into the rules of APA style, which has been adapted by many disciplines and is used by academics around the world.
We hope that all of the above will fully equip you to write a text that will make you proud of yourself. Once you are done and eager to share it with peers, you can seek guidance under publishing in scientific journals.
Furthermore, as source of inspiration and encouragement, we will bring interviews with a number of interesting people who have great knowledge on these topics.
To sum, our aim is to establish a good quality medium for online knowledge and experience transfer in the field of scientific publishing. In order to achieve this aim, we welcome your contributions. You can post to this blog, share your experiences – may they be good or bad, or simply suggest us what would you like us to write about!
Don’t hesitate to contact us: journal@efpsa.org!
We wish you the best in your future endeavours of scientific writing and publishing. Enjoy the blog!
