Binghamton University’s Undergraduate Research Center (URC) is launching a new student journal.

The URC was created two years ago in an attempt to increase undergraduate students’ involvement in research. The journal’s creators said they hope to encourage the publication of original research from a variety of disciplines.

“We decided it was time to create an undergraduate research journal that was open to students in all fields,” said Janice McDonald, director of the URC. “The ones that exist on campus right now are really focused in a department or on a subject area, but this journal will be open to all of our undergraduates in all of our colleges. I think it’s what’s lacking on campus right now.”

The URC hosts workshops ranging from poster design to introduction to research seminars, and has a number of programs that focus on connecting students with grants and summer research opportunities.

Ashley Serbonich, assistant to the director of the URC, said that with this journal the URC hopes to make students more aware of their peers’ research involvement.

“This has been a project that has been up and coming,” Serbonich said. “Last year with our graduate students, we had one of them do a proposal and look into examples of other schools’ journals that had similar university-wide formats for all disciplines, so we had a very basic layout of what we wanted to do.”

According to Mikhail-Ann Urquhart, a graduate assistant for the URC, students have a variety of options when submitting their work. It can be entered in the form of an article, video or picture in the case of artists.

Students submit a form online, which is reviewed by either an advanced graduate student or experienced faculty member. Their work receives comments and then passed to an editorial board composed of faculty members from different academic units on campus. This board will make all final decisions about which research is accepted.

“Ideally, we want a publication that will have about nine to 12 submissions,” Urquhart said. “We do want it to be a little bit competitive, but we are trying to keep the scope wide open for everyone to have a chance to apply.”

The journal will be published annually, and the URC aims to debut the first issue in the spring of 2015. Each year will have a specific theme that is broad enough to include all the possible departments, with this year’s theme being sustainability, according to Urquhart.

“We’re hoping to pull out and to reach those ideas that are actually going to affect sustainability,” Urquhart said. “It’s that dual impact that we expect to have in terms of boosting the ability of the students to shine, for them to build their resumes, for the University to shine and also to put ideas out there that are designed to help sustainability in the future.”

The journal has yet to be named. The URC is currently hosting a contest for who can come up with the best name, and the winner will receive a $50 gift card to the BU Marketplace.