oa Mentoring students into research through scholarly publishing

This study reports on undergraduate student experience with a mentor on understanding research through the publishing of scholarly manuscripts. The study designed a 10-week intervention/educational program. Two undergraduate students were integrated in an educational mentoring process to identify and evaluate research in scientific manuscripts, as in literature reviews, research questions, hypothesis, and methods. The undergraduate students were exposed to the process of review, research and production of manuscripts. The two students saw the research process in final form as a pre-published manuscript. Undergraduate students worked with the mentor in reviewing a manuscript and they were engaged in the process of editorial work through the manuscript management system. Students drew the post concept maps of the publishing process, pre and post intervention, the maps showed evidence of knowledge and complex interactions of players in the publishing process. The students evaluated the mentoring process and demonstrated satisfaction with the program strength. The study proposed the development of an undergraduate course in scholarly publishing and developed a blue-print of the course.