Welcome COMPASS: The Student Anthropology Journal of Alberta

Victoria: For me, students journals are important for two reasons: experience and learning. This goes for the writers as well as the people behind the journal. It allows students to explore and share research is a non-threatening environment, which is so important for their growth and development in academia. In addition, it also provides them with a bit of exposure.

Katherine: I love working with student journals; they provide so many different opportunities. As an author you learn how to work with feedback. You get a taste for publication in a low-stakes environment and get a final product that looks impressive on a resume. It allows you to grow as a researcher and experience one of the processes that professionals in our field must go through as part of their careers. As a reviewer it will also improve your writing, reading, and ability to give constructive feedback.

Katherine: I have had the chance to work with three student journals at three different universities. My role has changed from an author to a reviewer and copyeditor, and more recently, an editor in chief for COMPASS. Each role brings different challenges but it has been incredible to see what I have learned with each experience and even more impressive to see how I have used this experience in my own academic and professional endeavours. I can genuinely say that over the last six years I have become a better writer because of my involvement with student journals. I have also become a better reader. Depending on your role with a journal you are looking for different things: grammar, style, referencing, formatting, etc. Each role requires you to read or review a paper differently, which changes how you approach reading for research. Now that I am an editor in chief I have experienced how to manage a team and work with the process through a new electronic forum which has been a lot of fun.

Victoria: The most important thing I learned is just how much work actually goes into putting together a journal. It seemed like a very straightforward process, but there were more steps involved than I initially assumed. It taught me the importance of time management.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in starting or volunteering for a student journal?

Victoria: Make sure you commit and you have the time to do it. As interesting and exciting as it is to start such an endeavour, you must realize nothing will happen if you don't put in the work. It will take time to review a paper, send it back to the author(s), review it again, copy-edit, etc. COMPASS started a year ago, but only now are we able to put out our first issue. Teamwork matters!

Katherine: If you have the time and are interested in becoming a better writer, editor, and reader of different works – just do it! The UofA’s campus is an incredible environment to help you get involved and succeed with your initiatives. There are lots of different student journals on campus that are always looking for people to help them. If there isn’t one that relates to your research, consider starting your own. That is what happened with COMPASS. We reached out to our department’s library liaison and he soon put us in contact with Sonya Betz, Digital Initiatives Projects Librarian. Not only that, but by contacting other student journals we were able to see what did or did not work for them. The Journal community is very supportive and a great resource.

Anything else you want to say about journal publishing?

Katherine: Work with people that you enjoy. People who have similar work ethics, goals, and understandings. My Co-Editor has been a huge help during stressful times throughout our project. Being on the same page about what we wanted to accomplish, how, and recognizing that this was a “for fun” volunteer initiative went a long way for our continued success together.

Victoria: Enjoy what you do. Everything will be a lot easier if you treat it as a fun side-project, not a job. As a student you'll always have a million things going on, so you need to make sure this isn't just another "chore".
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In addition to COMPASS, the UofA Libraries supports several actively publishing student journals through its open access journal publishing service, including:

• Spectrum
• Past Imperfect
• Invoke
• Constellations
• Alberta Academic Review
• Multilingual Discourses

For more information about the Libraries’ free open access journal hosting service, please contact Sonya Betz, Digital Initiatives Projects Librarian (sonya.betz@ualberta.ca).