For many people, time spent at a university is a vital part of their educational, professional, and personal lives. But far too often, what happens on a college campus stays on the college campus: students take classes and do homework, but beyond contributing to their earning a degree, what they do has little impact on either their own lives or on the world around them.
But student journals like Sigma aim to change that by giving students an opportunity to learn vital skills and to get important ideas out into the world.
A Student-led Journal
Sigma is BYU’s journal of political and international studies. It’s been published yearly since 1983, when it was called Pi Sigma Alpha Review; spring 2024 saw the publication of its 41st issue. The journal is supported by the BYU chapters of Pi Sigma Alpha (National Political Honor Society) and Sigma Iota Rho (Honor Society for International Studies), along with the Department of Political Science, the International Relations program, and the Kennedy Center for International Studies.
Though a faculty advisor provides support, nearly everything is done by student participants: student editors choose from student submissions, then prepare them for publication. Doug Atkinson, the current faculty advisor, explains, “While I do give students advice, this is very much a student-led journal. The students will pick what they believe to be the best papers and then run these by me. However, at the end of the day, I try to always defer to their choices.”
For both the writers and the editors involved, participating in Sigma gives them skills and experience in the world of academic publishing. Amelia Watterson (International Relations and International Development ’24), the 2023–2024 editor-in-chief of the journal, says, “I think that participating in Sigma has given me the chance to understand what it would be like to work in the academic publishing sphere professionally. It was a valuable learning experience for me as I considered what field I wanted to go into and where my interests and talents would be best directed.”
Dr. Atkinson adds, “I believe that being involved helps students better understand what makes a good paper good. For example, they gain a deeper knowledge of what makes an argument especially convincing and what types of evidence make for a convincing test of this argument. I also think they learn to work as a team and provide and receive constructive criticism to make their work better.”
Finding a Voice
But it’s not only about gaining useful research and writing skills.
The back of each issue of Sigma states that the journal's aim is to “publish the work of diligent students who have fresh policy recommendations and new perspectives to offer, which would otherwise go unnoticed.” And for many students, it’s that chance to make their ideas heard, both on and off-campus, that matters.
David Romney is now an assistant professor in BYU’s Political Science Department and has published extensively. But one of his first experiences with having his research published came when his paper, “Comparing Fundamentalisms: A Social Movement Theory Approach,” was chosen for the 2011 issue of Sigma. After his experience as an author, he joined the journal staff for the 2011–2012 academic year as editor-in-chief.
His reasoning for submitting his paper, which he had written for a class, to Sigma was simple: “I decided that I had something important I had discovered, that I wanted to say.” He adds, "I remember at the time feeling really proud of what I wrote; I loved feeling like I was creating new and interesting knowledge on the topics that I cared about.”
Sigma gave him a chance to publish that knowledge for the world to see. Though his research interests have changed a lot since then, the act of getting this paper published gave him confidence that he had something meaningful to contribute: “More than anything,” he says, “it just provided an opportunity for a professor to encourage me and say ‘You've written something that's worth putting out there for other people to read.’ Sigma was a spot to put it. It was a good stepping stone in gaining that confidence and that voice.”
And the voices of Sigma writers are being heard all over the world. Each issue is made available for download on BYU’s ScholarsArchive, which tracks how often articles are being downloaded and where the downloads are happening; as of June 2024, Sigma articles have been downloaded 89,470 times in total, with more than 2,000 downloads happening most months. The most downloaded article, “The Effect of Making Election Day a Holiday: An Original Survey and a Case Study of French Presidential Elections Applied to the U.S. Voting System” by Caitlyn Bradfield and Paul Johnson, has been downloaded a total of 7,538 times.
And these downloads are coming from all over the world; the image below shows the locations of Sigma downloads for the last decade. Clearly, the articles in Sigma are reaching a global audience.
For Watterson, this is a large part of why she decided to get involved with Sigma as well: “I felt it was a great opportunity to be involved in something that would reach wide audiences and add to the global literature on interesting topics.”
Educate Yourself
Additionally, says Watterson, student authors and editors, along with those who read the journal, benefit from becoming more aware of the world around them. “It is my belief that we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about global happenings,” she says. “I think that any time we spend learning about different people, cultures, or issues around the world makes us better global citizens. For me, Sigma was an opportunity to be involved in something that transcended my everyday concerns and viewpoints and allowed me to learn about people and problems I never would have otherwise encountered. The more we learn about the world, the more context we have to understand today's global events, and the better we become at sidestepping our own prejudices and blind spots to be able to better understand others around us.”
Click here if you’d like to read previous issues of Sigma. And if you’re interested in getting involved, visit Sigma’s website for more information.