Publish with us
Academic supervisors and university lecturers often publish their own research in scientific journals. Yet, despite students carrying out their own piece of independent research as part of a dissertation project, they are often unaware that they can also publish their work.
Whilst many scientific journals may be unable or unwilling to consider publishing student research, the University Student Publishing Alliance has developed a platform and series of journals specifically designed for this purpose.
What are the benefits of publishing your work?
For undergraduate and postgraduate students, a dissertation is usually the first time that you will conduct an independent research project. This research or major writing project is often substantive in the amount of time, words and marks involved, meaning that it is usually the part of a university qualification that you feel most proud of. Yet, despite the significant time and effort that goes into writing a dissertation, students often do little with the insights that their research has provided.
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Our research shows that most students would be interested in publishing their dissertations but are unaware of how to go about doing this or unsure of the benefits. With this in mind we have outlined some of the key benefits of publishing your dissertation below.
Benefits of Publishing a Dissertation
Allows you to publicly showcase your research to a wider audience.
This is important as there are likely to be many other people (i.e. students, academics and the public) that are interested in reading the latest research findings on your specific topic area. It’s also a good way of getting your name out their in an area that you are interested in.
Publishing your written work will help with job and postgraduate applications.
If you are a published author, not only does this set you out from other applicants, but also showcases to potential employers and course leaders your ability to work, write and conduct research to the highest possible standards.
Publishing your research will strengthen your CV.
Currently less than 1% of undergraduate and 6% of masters students publish their dissertation research. Whilst we hope to increase this number over time, right now this gives you a unique opportunity to set yourself out from the crowd by including a publication on your CV. See the example formats below.
Thain, N. (2024). Investigating the Impact of a Virtual Experience Intervention on Stigma Reduction and Enhancement of Empathy, for Schizophrenia. Journal of Psychological Research and Investigation. Pp. 1 – 58.
Parkin, E. (2024). Examining the Relationship Between Demographics and Legal Attitudes on the Acceptance of Sexually Aggressive Attitudes. Journal of Psychology, Crime and Justice Studies. Pp. 1 – 36.
Baylis, M. (2024). Policing Anti-social Behaviour in England. Journal of Criminology, Sociology and Legal Studies. Pp. 1 – 41.
How does it work?
As long as you achieved a grade of 60% or higher on a dissertation (or other major writing project) that was independently written by you, you can submit this work to one of our journals for publication. The reason we require the work to have achieved a grade of 60% or above as this is widely considered to be a fair threshold for both quality and rigour of academic work.
When submitting your dissertation for publication you will be asked to confirm that the work achieved a grade of 2:1 or above. Providing this confirmation along with the other information requested at the point of submission, will ensure that your work can be published as quickly as possible.
Can work that achieved less than a 2.1 grade be published?
We do not carry out an independent peer-review of each piece of work submitted and instead rely on the mark awarded by the academic supervisor who graded the work as they are the subject matter specialist. Therefore, written work that scored less than a 2.1 grade (i.e. less than 60% overall), will not be considered for publication.
Do I have to pay to publish my work?
As the University Student Publishing Alliance is run by volunteers for the sole purpose of helping students publish their work, to strengthen their prospects of employment and further study, there is a nominal admin fee of £19.99 for processing your submission.
This contributes towards the costs of hosting and maintaining the website, marketing costs so that we can share your work as widely as possible, and ensuring all research published is freely accessible (read about the open science initiative here).
We want to reach as many students as possible so please share the website and our aims with other students that may also be interested in publishing their own dissertation research.
Ready to Submit?
Simply complete the form below and pay the admin fee of £19.99.