Student research - where to publish?

M

Dear all

Hopefully this is an appropriate topic for this forum.
I am an assistant professor of physics in a liberal arts college. I
have had, and for the first time, supervised a senior thesis involving
a calculation in supergravity. Although the calculation was original,
in the sense that it was not previously published, my judgement is that
it is on the trivial side as far as actual publication is concerned,
and was primarily for educational purposes. The student has been
wondering if we can still publish in a journal that accepts work of
this type. As I have no experience in publishing outside of the
standard research journals (e.g Phys Rev), I thought of asking this
forum. Does anyone know of a such a place?

Thanks

Timo Nieminen

On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, M wrote:

> Hopefully this is an appropriate topic for this forum.
> I am an assistant professor of physics in a liberal arts college. I
> have had, and for the first time, supervised a senior thesis involving
> a calculation in supergravity. Although the calculation was original,
> in the sense that it was not previously published, my judgement is that
> it is on the trivial side as far as actual publication is concerned,
> and was primarily for educational purposes. The student has been
> wondering if we can still publish in a journal that accepts work of
> this type. As I have no experience in publishing outside of the
> standard research journals (e.g Phys Rev), I thought of asking this
> forum. Does anyone know of a such a place?

If it's educational for others as well as for your student, there're
American Journal of Physics and European Journal of Physics. There are
likely other, lower impact, journals that will publish education-oriented
papers (I think I've seen a Brazilian one, but forget the name).

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/...,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

carlip-nospam@physics.ucdavis.edu

M <kotkot@yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]
> I am an assistant professor of physics in a liberal arts college. I
> have had, and for the first time, supervised a senior thesis involving
> a calculation in supergravity. Although the calculation was original,
> in the sense that it was not previously published, my judgement is that
> it is on the trivial side as far as actual publication is concerned,
> and was primarily for educational purposes. The student has been
> wondering if we can still publish in a journal that accepts work of
> this type. As I have no experience in publishing outside of the
> standard research journals (e.g Phys Rev), I thought of asking this
> forum. Does anyone know of a such a place?

Look at http://www.cur.org/ugjournal.html for some possibilities.
The only one I've actually seen is The Journal of Undergraduate
Research in Physics (http://www.jurp.org/), published by the
Society of Physics Students, which has some decent papers.

Depending on how it's written up -- if it's pedagogical enough, and
useful for other students -- you might consider the American Journal
of Physics.

Steve Carlip

Igor Khavkine

M wrote:
> Hopefully this is an appropriate topic for this forum.
> I am an assistant professor of physics in a liberal arts college. I
> have had, and for the first time, supervised a senior thesis involving
> a calculation in supergravity. Although the calculation was original,
> in the sense that it was not previously published, my judgement is that
> it is on the trivial side as far as actual publication is concerned,
> and was primarily for educational purposes. The student has been
> wondering if we can still publish in a journal that accepts work of
> this type. As I have no experience in publishing outside of the
> standard research journals (e.g Phys Rev), I thought of asking this
> forum. Does anyone know of a such a place?

A Google search quickly turned up the following:

Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics
(from the Society of Physics Students & Sigma Pi Sigma)
http://www.jurp.org/

Appears very much like what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Igor