UNM students founded an online journal that they said they hope will connect graduate students across the nation.

Graduate students Lindsay Ives and Leah Sneider launched a peer-reviewed journal, called In Progress this semester. It is the only journal in the country dedicated solely to graduate students, Sneider said.

“(Ives) and I often chatted about some of the challenges we faced as graduate students,” she said. “We mentioned that a graduate student journal focused on these discussions would help supplement our coursework and better prepare us for those challenges, and since we couldn’t find such a journal, we decided to create one on our own.”

Through the journal’s website, Ives said she hopes to create a national interdisciplinary community for graduate students.

“We hope that In Progress will eventually gain a readership broad enough and influential enough to impact the way graduate programs are run and the way people think about graduate study,” she said.

Ives said the journal provides graduate students with opportunities to get published.

“Because this is a brand new journal, those who get involved by submitting articles or reviews, reviewing submissions, or helping with publicity will be very influential in shaping the course that In Progress takes,” she said.

Graduate student Erin Gallegos published her work in the journal in its inaugural issue Oct. 24.

“I had never submitted anything for publication or peer review before,” she said. “It was less nerve-wracking to submit to a local journal, even though in some ways the stakes were just as high.”

Gallegos said the submission process included feedback from reviewers, which she found helpful.

“The editors will send out your manuscript to reviewers if it has the potential to be published, and those reviewers will think of things and notice things in your work that would never have occurred to you,” she said.

Submissions for the next issue are due Feb. 17, 2012, and guidelines are available on the journal’s website. The publication’s next issue is slated for April 2012.
InProgressJournal.net