Jenna Bacon, Campus Carrier arts and living editor

As a college student, there are several reasons why one might want to have their work published. Being a published author or co-author looks great on resumes and graduate school applications. Additionally, the writing and publication process can help improve one’s research skills and increase the chances of being invited to conferences or other networking opportunities.  There are several ways that students can get their work published. Depending on the type of work a student is involved in, whether serving as an upper-level research assistant for a professor’s paper or writing fiction, there are many scholarly and literary journals that accept submissions.

The submission process varies depending on what type of work the student is publishing and what journal that work is being submitted to. Literary journals typically consist of creative works of fiction or nonfiction while scholarly journals contain mostly academic research papers. Works submitted to literary journals usually undergo a less formal, more subjective review process, while the review process for works submitted to scholarly journals is more formal and peer reviewed. Furthermore, most literary journals allow you to submit work to multiple journals, but scholarly journals do not typically accept work that has been submitted anywhere else. 

Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing Clinton Peters teaches a course on publication for those interested in creative writing. According to Peters, that course will be available again in the Spring of 2026. In the meantime, Peters also suggested that any student interested in submitting to literary journals check out an article by Lincoln Michel titled “Lit Mag Submissions 101: How, When, and Where to Send Your Work.” This article can be found on electricliterature.com. 

When it comes to choosing which journals to submit to, there are some things that should be taken into consideration. Literary journals mostly publish creative fiction and nonfiction. However, it’s important for potential authors to pay attention to what kinds of creative works each journal publishes most frequently. For example, the Kenyon Review is known to publish a lot of poetry, while The Virginia Quarterly Review publishes a lot  of nonfiction. 

“Look at the author bios in the journals you like and see what other journals authors have been published in because those are good ones,” Peters said. “If these really good authors are saying they’ve been published in Five Points or the Southern Review or Fourth Genre or something like that, that’s a good one to put on your list.”

When it comes to scholarly journals, it typically takes about three months to get a response from an editor after submission of the work. Many editors of scholarly journals don’t accept research papers as they are submitted the first time. There is a revision process that can take three to six months.  All of this takes place after the initial research and writing has taken place, which can also take a substantial amount of time to complete. 

Students are able to work with professors as research assistants. If a student contributes a certain amount of work to the research and writing process, they will be credited as a co-author of the research paper. To be considered a co-author, a research assistant must help collect literature, summarize that literature, collect and analyze data and write up a summary of both the data and the literature. Associate Professor of Communication Kimberly Field-Springer shares some additional aspects of the publication process of research papers.

“When you submit your research, it’s anonymous so there’s no bias,” said Field-Springer. “Then they send it out to usually around three reviewers and then you will submit your entire research with a title page for the editor, so they have your information as well.”

Field-Springer has recently published a couple of research papers with students as co-authors, including “(Re)claiming Stories in the #MeToo Movement: Righting Epistemic Wrongs of Physical, Mental, and Emotional Harms of Sexual Violence” and “‘Are you vaccinated? Yeah, I’m immunized’: a risk orders theory analysis of celebrity COVID-19 misinformation.” Most recently, Field-Springer has worked with senior Elizabeth Chandler and other co-authors on a research paper titled “#Mental Health Self-Diagnosis: Harmful or Helpful on TikTok.”

Publishing work while still a college student is not as unattainable as it may seem. Whether contributing to a professor’s research or crafting creative fiction, students have various avenues for publication. There is a lot of importance in understanding where to publish, what to look for in a journal, and the different submission processes that take place. Through seeking guidance from professors and online resources, students should be able to navigate the publication process with ease. Ultimately, the experience of publishing can be a transformative step in a student’s academic and professional journey.