While many undergraduate students work in labs on campus, people rarely hear about the real scientific research they perform. But a group of undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin is about to change this.

The Wisconsin Undergraduate Journal of Science — known as WISCI — is the new fully student-run undergraduate research journal, which will publish peer reviewed news, features and research articles relating to research on campus.

Its creators are planning to launch the first issue of WISCI next week.

WISCI plans to encourage students to get involved in research and allow them to have real documentation of their work.

"We want to be a forum for undergraduate research. So much of it goes on but passes under the radar," said WISCI features editor Dan Webster. "People don't know about it, but we should be able to hear what our peers are doing on campus."

The first issue, Webster said, will cover topics in the natural and physical sciences and some social sciences such as psychology and anthropology.

The journal will be published once a semester in print form and distributed to department offices and classrooms. It will also be available online at www.WISCI.com.

Research articles can only be submitted by undergraduate students and may be done online.

Webster said publishing will allow students to have a record of research that they can refer to and "forces [students] to think about how to communicate their research to other people."

The WISCI journal is funded and advised by the College of Letters and Science honors department and is also being advised by Dave Nelson, a biochemistry professor and director at the Center for Biology Education.

Nelson will also be supporting the journal by contributing a portion of profits from his textbook.

"I was one of several people to give them advice, but they did this almost completely on their own. They showed me a mockup of the first issue and I was completely knocked out by it," Nelson said. "This started with students and that's exactly the way it should be."

WISCI will showcase undergraduate research work that otherwise goes unnoticed — and this kind of "world-class" research is the hallmark of a large university like UW, Nelson added.

Students who publish in the journal will also benefit directly from WISCI, Nelson said, noting published students applying to graduate school will be better candidates than those who have not been published.

"It really means something; it means more than a high grade point," Nelson said.

And WISCI editor-in-chief Erick Butzlaff agrees that scientific publishing is of great importance in the scientific world.

"Publishing is the most important thing to do as a scientist," Butzlaff remarked. "If you haven't published it, it may as well not exist. Publishing is the method through which scientists validate and disseminate their research."

Student-run research journals exist at other schools, but WISCI is currently the only one that is fully run by undergraduates and peer-reviewed.

According to Butzlaff, WISCI hopes to inspire other university students to become involved in scientific research while simultaneously allowing students already involved in research to see and appreciate what others have done.

And WISCI staffers are hoping the publication will target "underclassmen science student[s] at UW who are not yet involved in research" for its core readers.

"[We hope] they [will] pick up a copy of our journal, see what other undergraduates are doing and think, 'Wow! That's really cool. This is something I want to get involved in,'" Butzlaff said.