Applied Research for Students

Why is It Useful to Share Your Research?

Making your work publicly available has many advantages:

• demonstrates your capacity to handle data, write well, and manage a research project
• establishes you as a contributor in your field and may lead to opportunities for networking and collaborations
• publishing is a requirement for many research and academic positions

You have several options for sharing your work which are introduced on this page:

Seneca Student Projects Repository

The Seneca Student Projects Repository is an online collection of final projects from students in the degree programs. Each degree program develops criteria by which a project is selected for the repository.

Knowledge Mobilization Hub (new!)

Seneca's Knowledge Mobilization Hub (KMH) is a collaborative project between Seneca faculty and Seneca Libraries. It is a publicly accessible repository showcasing student capstone work and other special projects.

Undergraduate Journals

Academic Journals

Publishing student research in an academic journal can be tricky. The well-known journals are looking for papers that present significant findings, and this can be difficult to accomplish in your first research article. Therefore, you may want to target a smaller journal that publishes on your topic.

Selecting a Journal - If you aren't sure where to submit you can browse the Serials Directory for journals in your subject area by searching for a keyword that matches your field of research (e.g., psychology), and look for titles that are not particularly expensive. You can also google your topic area using multiple iterations of your keywords and the word "journal" to try to find a journal in your field.

Submitting your work - Make sure that you have followed the Submission Guidelines, sometimes called Instructions for Authors. All journals will have a format, and submission guidelines that will need to be adhered to to be successful. Here is an example of author instructions from The Review of General Psychology.

Self Publishing

Even if you don't yet feel ready to submit your work to an academic journal or present at a conference, you can still become part of the conversation. Using a blog, or other form of social media, you can begin to explore ideas in your field and begin to build a professional network.

Conferences

Conferences are an excellent opportunity to present your research to other professionals. Methods for presenting vary:

• a presentation in which you present the findings from your paper
• doing a "lightning talk" (a short talk of specific length)
• a poster presentation (displaying a physical or digital poster among others and talking one-on-one with conference attendees)

These opportunities will almost always result in an abstract published in the Conference Proceedings or Conference Program.

Look at professional organizations in your field to find conferences that are a good match for your research. Conferences are also an excellent opportunity to network . Tip: Deadlines to submit your proposal are often months before the date of the actual conference.

For tips on improving presentation skills, see the tutorial below.

Posters (Presented at Conferences)

Presenting a poster at a conference is an excellent way to share your findings in a more casual setting. Presenting your paper in a visual format allows you to summarize the main points of your research and connect with others to share that information. Poster presentations are often a feature of conferences. 

To learn about creating a poster, see the tutorial below.