Articles may be submitted anytime up to our deadline in early January. Received articles undergo double-blind peer review by 2-3 scientists at the faculty or post-doc level in the relevant field, and 2-3 rounds of copyediting by members of the MSURJ board. Revised articles are returned in early March with either acceptance contingent on acceptance of revisions and peer review recommendations or rejection justified by peer review commentary. Final proofs are presented to authors just prior to publication, and the final journal is published in April.
MSURJ is a scientific journal that primarily publishes original undergraduate research. This research may be part of a 396 course, honours thesis, summer research, or an independent project, as long as the article presents novel findings by an undergraduate student. We also may accept a limited number of literature reviews or interest articles geared towards the general public. Research relating to any subject studied in the Faculty of Science is considered, including both health and physical sciences. For more information, see our submission guidelines. If interested in popular science writing, look into writing for our blog.
Our detailed submission guidelines can be found here. In brief, articles may be submitted in either .doc or .tex format, and should be no longer than 4000 words (not including the title, abstract, or references).
We have received concerns about publishing data in standard research journals after publication in MSURJ. We realize this is a serious issue of contention for many undergraduate researchers and their supervisors, and would like to emphasize that MSURJ serves as a voice for undergraduate research within the McGill community, not as a competitor for standard research journals.
You can have your colleagues or supervisor send us an email giving their consent to have your paper published in MSURJ. When contacting them, please attach the consent form (Publication Rights Agreement). This email must originate from their academic email account, and should contain the following sentence:
You should suggest professors who are in the same field of research as your work and have the necessary background to judge the contents of your manuscript. You do not have to know the reviewers, and they are not restricted to McGill professors.
