Do undergrads ever publish in a major journal?

Wolke · 4 months

I don't know about econ specifically, but I've had bio friends in undergrad who were on track to be the last author in papers to be published in major journals. I feel your professor is right to suggest that you try though - the worst that could happen is that they reject you, which doesn't change anything. Going through the publishing process would also be helpful if you intend to stay in research. Let the journal worry about whether or not they want to publish undergrad research - you just go ahead and give it a shot.

DouggyD · 4 months

Melissa Dell published her MA thesis in econometrica. If the work is good, no one cares. Just saying B journal is pretty terrible advice though. There are second tier general interest journals like ReStat and then top field journals, and then obviously second tier field journals, any of which I could see as counting as a B journal. But the papers they accept are very different.

What's the punchline, and general methodology?

boraca · 4 months

My friend submitted an article (Computer Science related, but that's not the point) to a journal and while they didn't publish it, they read it and gave him almost 20 pages of comments on his work including style tips (English wasn't his first language, but now you could say it is) and specific sentences he should avoid (it wasn't a copy pasted submission guide, they've put some man-hours into it), e.g. he had a habit of asking questions in the text like 'But why is that?' and it's frowned upon in a scientific text. In my University there's a contest twice a year where students write articles and make presentations of them before a committee and the best article in each category (there are 18 of them) gets published in a journal. In Poland if you want a government scholarship on top of the one granted by university you actually need to publish at least once a year. So yes, journals consider publishing even from first year students, it's encouraged and in some countries it's almost impossible to start a doctoral program without publishing while being an undergrad.

BehemothTheCat · 4 months

B journals will do it, if your results are interesting, you definitely have a chance (Or A journals if the results are really good...). So if your prof recommends it go for it, it really can't hurt. Or, you can look for a co-author that's established if you'd really like to get it published.

economicurtis · 2 months

As a solo authors, your odds are pretty slim for a number of reasons. Perhaps partner up with the adviser and seek to be first author. An undergrad in my program published (with two professor co-authors) in JET (a close to top journal). He did a a fair amount of the work. Definitely a wise route to a good grad program.

nietzschelover · 4 months

try undergrad journals

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