Every year, after the science fairs around Boston wrapped up, Sarah Fankhauser watched the same thing happen: research that students had spent months preparing ended up in the trash. Fankhauser, then a graduate student at Harvard, began asking why that work couldn't be preserved and shared, and why middle and high school students had no real scientific journal of their own. Her answer was the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI), now the name that comes up most often when students talk about publishing research.
A real journal, built for students
Fankhauser and fellow graduate students at Harvard Medical School founded JEI in 2011, starting from a simple conviction: publishing is how a scientist completes a piece of research. The journal's first paper appeared in 2012, and it has published hundreds since.
JEI works the way a professional journal does. Students write their papers in English, and working scientists, from PhD students to senior researchers, review them and send back detailed feedback. Along the way, a student does what scientists do: forms a hypothesis, carries out the study, and writes it up. Papers are published online and are open access, free for anyone to read. Authors pay a modest submission fee, and there is no separate publication charge.
| JEI at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2011, by Harvard graduate students |
| Authors | Middle and high school students worldwide |
| Subjects | Hypothesis-driven research in biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, environmental science and more |
| Access | Online and open access |
| Review | Peer review by PhD students and more senior scientists |
| Record | Every article receives a DOI, so it can be cited in applications and portfolios |
Who can submit
JEI is not reserved for students at specialized science high schools or international schools. A student at a regular high school who can think scientifically and design a sound study can take it on. That doesn't mean it takes just any paper. JEI judges each manuscript strictly on its structure and logic as a scientific paper, so preparation matters.
