Updates to JURA Policies - just in time for the 2020-2021 school year!

2020-08-13

Effective immediately, here are the changes to JURA's policies and workings compared to the 2019-2020 season:

1. We are discontinuing the distinction between "Full Editions" and "Special Editions," and will simply publish two issues of JURA per year.

2. We are relaxing our Conflict of Interest policy: reviewers may now be associated with named authors, but named authors still cannot be reviewers.

3. JURA will no longer "specialize" in any particular discipline or field of study.

4. We have added a field to our Permission to Publish form where students and supervisors may recommend reviewers.

Updates #2, 3, and 4 together represent a new committment to JURA being a venue for all fields of study equally. Our previous and more limited focus on Biomedical Engineering was motivated by a desire to reflect professional (specialized) journals more closely; the previous Conflict of Interest policy was likewise designed to mimic the same. These new deviations from how professional journals operate are necessary to enable JURA to serve all fields of study that can yield undergraduate research works. 

The change to JURA's Conflict of Interest policy is designed to enable the new "recommend reviewers" feature. Please survey the updated document itself for more details.

Thank you for perusing this information about our updated practices, and we continue to look forward to working together with bright undergraduate researchers and their supervisors!