Collage, Photo Credit: https://artsinitiative.columbia.edu/student-arts-grants/
It is a wonderful thing to be paid for your research. That being said, outside of what you could call the traditional undergraduate research economy—fellowships, scholarships, etc.—student-run journals, magazines and reviews afford Columbia students plenty of opportunities to publish their research pro bono. While student publications may oftentimes lack the funds to financially compensate students for their work, many of them are eager to provide writers and researchers with other invaluable resources such as editors, peer review and publicity for their work. And while funded research opportunities are often extremely competitive, and therefore require students to spend hours getting their application materials together, very few student publications want to see your CV; most simply evaluate whether or not the proposed paper, essay or other project is a good fit for the publication.
Writing for student publications can be freeing: the barrier to entry is low, and while you may not be paid for your work, in most cases you can write about what you like, when you like, as long as your work meets the publication’s (usually fairly open-minded) standards. Given how highly structured academic writing assignments and research projects tend to be, and the restrictions in subject matter that can come with working with a narrowly specialized mentor, the prospect of writing for a student publication can seem as daunting as it is liberating. Writing with something near to carte blanche, you may need to ask yourself what, in the absence of a carrot or a stick, you would really like to find out. And lacking the structure that often comes with an organized undergraduate research program, or the direction that a mentor might provide, it may seem as though you should, or must, or are expected to go about this sort of research completely on your own. This is, of course, not the case.
Working with a student publication, or almost any publication for that matter, is inevitably and fortunately collaborative in nature. While the research you do is ultimately in your hands, publications each have their own, sometimes very precise idea of what types of content they publish, what that content sounds like, and how it looks. These standards, which vary in their rigidity from publication to publication, can, if need be, give structure to an otherwise amorphous idea. For example, the Columbia Journal of History encourages students to send work produced in an academic context, such as in a seminar or for a thesis, and offers to work with students, upon the acceptance of their work, for 1-2 months as part of their editorial review process. On the other hand, Gadfly Magazine, where I held various editorial roles for three years, accepts “anything with philosophical substance,” be it a nonfiction essay, a story or a musical composition, and accepts both completed pieces and pitches of less than 500 words. In cases in which only a pitch is required for submission, you can expect to work with an editor to determine exactly what shape your research project will take and exactly how you will bring it to fruition. Though you should not generally lean on editors to do your writing or your research for you, most editors know that the best work is produced in dialogue with others, and are happy to become your interlocutors throughout the course of your project. (I speak for myself at the very least.)
Again, it is a wonderful thing to be paid for your research. But it is also a wonderful thing that at Columbia, student publications provide undergraduate researchers with so many other forms of support. Remember, finally, that if said publications seem at all intimidating, it is with journals, reviews and magazines as it is with black bears: they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.