SLU students launch journal to air peers' research papers

CANTON — The best papers at St. Lawrence University are no longer the ones that get A's. They are now the ones that get published.

The university Friday launched a peer-reviewed journal, "Glocal," for exceptionally well-written research papers. For the first issue, a team of seven students read and edited papers and published four in the journal.

"We went through 20 to 25 papers," senior global-studies major Colin S. Campbell said. "We really wanted it to be respected as a truly academic endeavor. We didn't want it to be a joke. We didn't want it to be a magazine. We wanted it to be a journal."

The journal is almost entirely the work of students; several global studies majors came up with the idea last year and figured out how to run it. Their faculty adviser, global-studies professor Jayantha Jayman, helped them and encouraged other professors to recommend student work.

A student-reviewed journal has been discussed on and off for years at St. Lawrence. It started to become a reality when Lukasz Niparko, a sophomore from Poland, started talking about it with some other students. Mr. Niparko went abroad, but the other students carried on without him.

The journal's title, "Glocal," is not a typo, but a buzzword meant to emphasize the impact that events happening far away have on local communities, and vice versa, Mr. Niparko said.

The group of about a dozen global-studies students had trouble, not in finding a name or getting people to help with the editing, but in keeping track of various edited versions of the papers and encouraging students from outside their major to submit work.

"None of us knew anything about running a journal," Mr. Campbell said. "We really figured it all out from scratch. I thought it was going to be easier than it was."

Journal staff members are talking about plans to host a panel discussion in the fall to drum up interest in the next issue.

"Each paper does not have to embody what 'Glocal' is. 'Glocal' is defined by the papers inside it," Mr. Campbell said. "Hopefully, it will reflect the interests of the students, their changing passions, their interest in global issues, local issues. It's supposed to be plastic. We want it to change."