Communicating Science

Effective communication is an indispensable mechanism that allows scientific inquiry to continue flourishing . As such, learning the necessary skills to effectively communicate science is a crucial tool for any young scientist. CJPN seeks to enhance student life by providing students in the psychology department with unique opportunities that will enrich their understanding of the scientific process, as well as benefit their future careers.

We offer students a more traditional route to publishing their research by preparing a scientific manuscript and going through a peer-review process with fellow undergraduate and graduate students in psychology. Because the discipline of psychology is extremely competitive at the graduate level and beyond, many students are eager to gain such experiences in manuscript preparation and collaboration; skills that will inevitably make them competitive candidates for future graduate studies. Moreover, CJPN provides senior undergraduates with editorial experience, specifically, with the opportunity to become a peer-reviewer. These undergraduate reviewers, in collaboration with graduate student reviewers, will gain sought-after professional skills, as well as an inside look into how professional science is conducted.

Importantly, students who wish to publish in CJPN must first obtain their Principal Investigator’s (P.I.) approval to do so, if the data that is presented in the manuscript belongs to their P.I.. We are a zero impact journal, meaning that publishing student work in CJPN does not preclude students from re-submitting their work to higher impact journals; in fact, we encourage all students to publish in reputable journals!

Sustainability

As an empirical science journal, we take environmental sustainability seriously. As such, all of our operations are done electronically, with zero product waste. All manuscript submissions to our journals will be digital (i.e., Microsoft Word), and our final journal issues will be distributed online as PDFs. Additionally, all previous journal issues will be accessible online as back issues, ensuring that all of the work our volunteers and authors have contributed will remain digitally accessible.

The Peer Review Process

1. Editorial Review
Submissions are reviewed by the editorial team and are evaluated based on the originality of work, the validity of methodological design, and the overall impactfulness of the manuscript. Submissions are then accepted or rejected.

2. Peer Review
Based on the manuscript’s area of focus, accepted manuscripts are then distributed to anonymous reviewers (2 graduate students, 1 undergraduate student) who are knowledgeable in a particular sub-discipline of psychology.

3. Conditional Acceptance/Rejection
Editors compile peer-reviewer feedback, and return manuscripts to the authors. Authors must then address all reviewer comments, and implement any and all changes they see fit for the submission to be officially accepted. Generally, there are 2 rounds of revisions to ensure that manuscripts are ready to be published.