The UBC Student Journal Community of Practice (UBC SJCoP) was formed in February 2025 through a series of conversations and collaboration on a panel at the Student Journal Forum. Created by members of The Garden Statuary, the community brings student editors together to share solutions to common problems, attend workshops, and discuss new possibilities and curiosities about our common interest in undergraduate student publishing.
The UBC SJCoP began with four members representing six journals on campus, and has since grown to fifteen members with representatives from nine different journals:
- The Garden Statuary
- Logos Journal
- The Ethnograph: Journal of Anthropological Studies
- The UBC Journal of Historical Studies
- The Undergraduate Journal of Art History & Visual Culture
- Trail Six: Undergraduate Journal of Geography
- Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research
- Mantle: The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Research
- UBC Journal of Political Studies
- Wreck: The Graduate Journal of Art History, Visual Art and Theory
Founding Members
CJ McGillivray, Amy Ng, Jenykha Sangha and Freya Woolgrove
Guiding Questions
- What happens when editors from multiple journals come together across a campus and compare notes?
- What unique insights and collaborative solutions can be discovered?
- And how can interdisciplinary perspectives complicate or enrich the editing process for undergraduate student journals?
Guiding Principles
Our community of practice was formed partly in response to a problem of high turnover, lack of knowledge transfer, and difficulties with maintaining consistency within student journals. Journal team members regularly graduate, and without mentors, the people stepping up into leadership roles end up having to grapple with a steep learning curve. The UBC SJCoP responds to these issues by exploring how undergraduate journals can support and learn from one another on a broader scale, sharing best practices and solutions to common problems. We hope to combine the strengths and successes of each journal involved, compiling resources into useful documentation that can be passed down to future members and shared beyond the UBC campus, providing a blueprint for other universities and colleges to launch similar communities.
How to Get Involved
Are you interested in joining our community of practice? The simplest way to connect is to join our group chat and introduce yourself. We would love to get to know you and hopefully collaborate!
What are Communities of Practice?
Have you ever wished you could connect with others on campus who are doing work similar to yours? Do you have a great idea or approach that you’d love to pass along? Communities of practice are a great way to share with and learn from others on the UBC campus and beyond. Within a community of practice, group members come together to share solutions, ideas and curiosities about a common interest or passion. The goal is to learn from one another and improve how we do things.