THE PI SIGMA ALPHA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF POLITICS

In 2000, Purdue University began The American Undergraduate Journal of Politics & Government. This journal was founded and run by Purdue students with faculty oversight, and it was supported with modest Chapter Activity Grants from the national office of Pi Sigma Alpha. After publishing a few issues, Purdue's Pi Sigma Alpha chapter requested a more formal relationship with the national Pi Sigma Alpha office. The request came at just the right time as the national office was interested in sponsoring an undergraduate journal that was national in scope. Pi Sigma Alpha committed to supporting the journal for $10,000 per year.Footnote ¹ To ensure the benefits of the journal went beyond Purdue, the national office required that the journal's editorship rotate to a different institution every three years.

The journal was renamed The Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics, and its first issue was published in fall 2004. This sponsorship not only provided the journal with firm financial footing, but also allowed it to gain more national exposure. The call for papers is distributed to all Pi Sigma Alpha chapters (nearly 700), as are copies of the journal upon the publication of each issue (two per year). After Purdue's tenure as host, Union College was awarded the editorship in a competitive process. In the fall of 2007, Union's Pi Sigma Alpha chapter began its first of three years as the journal's host.

The journal truly is national in scope, receiving submissions from students at institutions across the entire country. Furthermore, manuscripts have been submitted by students from many different types of institutions: small liberal arts colleges; state universities; large, private colleges and universities; Ivy League schools; religious colleges and universities; and military colleges. In the nine issues (38 articles) that have been published since Pi Sigma Alpha began sponsoring the journal, the published authors have attended 30 different institutions. The affiliations of these authors reflect the national and institutional diversity of the submissions (see Table 1). In terms of content, the journal strives to publish the best political science work written by undergraduates, regardless of topic or disciplinary subfield. Indeed, articles have been published in all of the main subfields of political science. With 47% of the published pieces, topics in the subfield of U.S. politics are most common, followed by comparative politics (24%) and international relations (18%). Least common are political theory papers, which comprise only 11% of the articles. Finally, the journal's pages showcase research from a variety of methodological traditions, including normative analyses, focused case studies (both qualitative and quantitative), and large-case quantitative studies, to name a few.

Table 1.

Institutional Affiliations of Published Authors, Fall 2004–Fall 2008

Note: Two articles have been published by students from institutions that are followed by (2). For all others, one article has appeared.

The organizational structure of the journal includes three student editors (two co-editors and a deputy editor), a student editorial board, a faculty advisory board, and a faculty advisor. The editors and members of the editorial board belong to Union College's Pi Sigma Alpha chapter. Twice per year (once for each issue), a call for papers is disseminated to political science departments across the country, soliciting superior undergraduate manuscripts. Once the manuscripts are received, the editorial board carefully reads and evaluates them. The number of submissions hovered in the high 20s or low 30s through 2007. Beginning with the spring 2008 issue though, at least 50 manuscripts have been submitted per issue. For nearly all issues, four manuscripts are published (six were published in the fall 2004 issue). Each manuscript is read by multiple editorial board members, generally at least five. While board members do read manuscripts within their main subfield of interest, everyone also reads manuscripts in other areas of political science. This is ideal, as it ensures that each manuscript is evaluated by board members who are familiar with the manuscript's topic and those who are learning about it for the first time. A more thorough evaluation of the manuscript thus results.

Each manuscript is assessed along a number of criteria, including its contribution to political science scholarship, support for its main conclusions, appropriateness of its methodology, and writing quality. To help editorial board members become acquainted with the evaluation of the papers, they begin their tenure by reading brief articles on reviewing manuscripts for political science journals (e.g., Bonjean and Hullum Reference Bonjean and Hullum1978; Zines Reference Zines1985). Then, at weekly meetings, board members discuss their assessments of the week's manuscripts, using these reviewing criteria, and everyone who read a particular manuscript comments. The goal is to reach a decision regarding whether the manuscript is a strong candidate for publication, could be a strong candidate with some revisions, or is not of high enough quality to be published in the journal. When there is agreement as to the quality of a manuscript, a final decision emerges quite quickly. Often though, lively debate ensues over a manuscript's merits. Common points of disagreement occur around whether a manuscript really does present a new contribution and whether the paper's flaws can be addressed in a revision. Affirmative responses to either or both will usually result in a publication recommendation. Editorial board members not only present their own assessments, but also try to persuade their peers to agree with them. And, with more practice on the board, members prepare their arguments before the meeting, anticipating what counterarguments might be presented by their peers. Sometimes, members are persuaded during the discussion to change their minds away from their initial assessments, while other times they hold firm.

Occasionally, the editorial board cannot reach a decision on a manuscript. This most often occurs when the members who read the paper are very split as to its publishability, with some members arguing vociferously for publication while others are adamantly opposed. In this situation, the manuscript is then read by another round of board members. Typically, five new members read the manuscript. At the second meeting to discuss this paper, all members (10 or more) weigh in on their evaluation of it and participate in the final assessment.

For each round of submissions, the papers deemed of highest quality by the editorial board are forwarded to the journal's faculty advisory board. The advisory board currently consists of eight political science professors from colleges and universities across the U.S.; three are members of Pi Sigma Alpha's national executive council and five are selected by the journal's faculty advisor. Advisory board members usually read one manuscript for each issue. Much as these faculty do when reviewing manuscripts for disciplinary journals, they provide the editors with a publication recommendation, as well as comments to support this recommendation. If a revise-and-resubmit recommendation is given, the advisory board member also specifies the necessary revisions. Once the editors receive the evaluations from the advisory board, they identify which manuscripts have received the most positive assessment from both the editorial and advisory boards. These papers are the ones selected for publication.

Although the selected manuscripts are of high quality, revisions are almost always required. The editors work closely with the authors to ensure that any revisions recommended by the advisory board be done sufficiently. When the authors return their revised manuscripts, editing, which is at times extensive, must also occur before publication. The editors copy edit the manuscripts, check (and double check) that citations and references conform to the APSA Style Manual, and format the articles to fit the layout. Once this work is complete, the final edition is sent to the printer. Work on the next issue then commences (if it has not already).

Throughout the process, the faculty advisor plays a behind-the-scenes, yet vital, role. She runs the first editorial board meeting of the year, when manuscript-reviewing criteria and publishing norms in the profession are discussed. From then on, all discussions regarding the submitted manuscripts are conducted entirely by the students, with the co-editors facilitating. She does not read the manuscripts and thus does not provide an assessment of them. Occasionally during these discussions, the student board members do have questions that they cannot easily answer and so pose them to the faculty advisor. Examples include: Is this methodology really sound? Would it be unreasonable to ask an author to make such and such a revision? These questions tend to be more common during the early tenure of the co-editors and the board. With experience though, the questions become less common. The faculty advisor becomes more active in the final stages of preparing the articles for publication, by training the editors how to copy edit and by reading over and revising, if necessary, the final versions of each article. Generally speaking, then, the faculty advisor provides guidance to the editorial board and is always available for questions or feedback, all the while empowering the students to make their own decisions. Finally, she also conveys enthusiasm for the journal (to the student board, faculty and administrators across campus, etc.) as well as tries to keep the students motivated and passionate about their work. Fortunately, this latter task is easy, as the students take their board responsibilities very seriously and are committed to producing an outstanding publication.

THE UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL AS A LEARNING TOOL

The journal has had a significant impact on student learning, both at Purdue University and Union College.Footnote ² Working on the editorial board affords students the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of political science topics and to develop various academic and interpersonal skills. To document these pedagogical benefits, we rely upon two sources. First, and primarily, we draw from comments provided by members of the student editorial board at Union. After their first term of service, these students completed a questionnaire designed to assess their experience. One of the questions asked, “Has serving on the Editorial Board been a useful learning experience? If yes, how? If not, why not?” Much of our discussion here relies on responses to these questions. We supplement this information with our own assessments. In our roles as student editors or faculty advisors, we oversee the entire operation of the publication and have thought about the benefits of working on the journal more broadly than the questionnaire item encouraged members of the editorial board to do. Thus, the second source of information for this discussion is our own observations.

One of the most apparent benefits for students working on the journal relates to their understanding of political science. Serving on the editorial board increases students' substantive knowledge of political science topics and enhances their understanding of political science as a field of study. Instead of viewing political science as a series of (somewhat related) classes strung together, they begin to perceive the discipline as a body of accumulated knowledge. Students with interests and class experience primarily in only one subfield have the opportunity to learn about topics outside of their narrow area, thereby discovering the true breadth and diversity within the discipline. As one student put it, “Reading the submitted articles gave me a chance to learn about a number of different theories and issues that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise.” As illustrated by the two following comments from seniors, even students with broad exposure across political science learned about topics new to them over the course of reading so many manuscripts (approximately 20 per issue; most editorial board members serve for at least two issues): “I learn a lot from reading the papers; they have helped me expand my political horizons, specifically to international politics”; “I learned a lot from reading these articles, especially because they were on a wide range of issues.”

The editorial board members' research skills are enhanced through their work on the journal. During the process of reading and evaluating many individual research pieces, students develop an understanding of why specific research topics are chosen, how research is performed, and how that research can be best presented. In other words, board members gain a greater appreciation for the research process. They also learn what constitutes a well-composed literature review and how to discuss one's own research in relation to existing scholarship. Often, these lessons are learned by identifying poor examples of original research (poorly defined research topics, unclear or incomplete literature reviews, etc.).

Similarly, the great breadth in submitted work exposes students to research methodologies, data-gathering techniques, and statistical analyses that they may not have covered in previous course work. Even if they have experience with a specific methodology, reviewing manuscripts often requires them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the method more thoroughly than they had before. Many faculty who teach undergraduate research-methods courses use active-learning techniques, under the belief that “students learn [research methods] best by doing” (Hubbell Reference Hubbell1994, 63). Actively reviewing manuscripts for journal publication is certainly one approach for hands-on learning, and one that results in editorial board members understanding specific methodologies more thoroughly. Furthermore, integrating their understanding of these techniques into their evaluative decisions forces students to think critically about their own perspectives regarding political science research. In some cases, this requires students to address, if not remove, their own biases toward specific research methods. This scenario appears most often for quantitative analyses. Early in their experience on the board, it is not uncommon to hear students evaluate quantitative work negatively by stating that the manuscript was too boring because “it was all about statistics” or criticizing the author's writing because the board member did not understand the content of the paper. Of course, some quantitative manuscripts are uninteresting or unclear. Yet, by serving on the editorial board, most members begin to recognize whether their negative assessments are due to weaknesses in the manuscript or their lack of understanding of certain methodologies.

Other academic skills were also improved while working on the journal, most notably writing and debating skills. As one student stated, “serving on the Editorial Board … has taught me to look at my work as if someone else were reading it, and to thus improve it accordingly.” Two students echoed this insight and walked away with newfound perspective on how their own academic work is evaluated: “I can see the flaws in my own work now that I understand what people look for”; “It has helped me immensely to see others' academic writing and to see what appeals to me as strong writing. I'm learning how to improve my writing through others.” After being on the board, students are also more likely to understand writing as a process involving multiple drafts and significant editing and revising, rather than as a one-shot deal.

In addition, several students lauded the effect that the evaluative process of manuscript review has on their critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as the honing of their debate skills. Discussing the manuscripts provides a forum for students to present “their opinions and get their opinions across,” noted one student. Still others commented that this experience teaches them to be “more receptive to others' opinions” or teaches them “about [their] own ideas and perspective.” These effects are very similar to those that have been found by faculty who incorporate formal debates into their classes, namely, improvement of oral communication skills, deeper understanding of topics, and ability to respond to the arguments of those with different opinions (Omelicheva Reference Omelicheva2007; Omelicheva and Avdeyeva Reference Omelicheva and Avdeyeva2008).

Finally, the process of serving on the editorial board also cultivates interpersonal skills. By virtue of time constraints and a subsequent necessity for productivity, students learn the importance of fostering a collegial environment that focuses on evaluation over argumentation. Editorial board members quickly learn that an environment of mutual respect and teamwork is essential for them to complete their tasks. This atmosphere, which can be rare among a group of high-achieving students with strong opinions, allows the journal to function efficiently.