Meet Grace Fisher our new Editor of volume 18, for Reinvention

Grace joined the team in October of last year. She is a third-year student in the Warwick Medical School graduate programme and has obtained her Biological Sciences degree at Imperial College London. Grace has agreed to talk to us about her journey with Reinvention and what being an Editor is like.

Let’s start with the basics. Please tell us a bit more about you and your journey with Reinvention. I am really interested in academia, although I'm going into a career that's quite hands-on.

I still have really enjoyed academia all the way from my undergraduate. I'm hoping that I can carry on in research as well as practise as a doctor. I've written a few papers myself and had some publications, but the big thing about Reinvention is it gives you a pathway that other journals may not otherwise have. Say you are writing your first paper and it goes really, really well and you know you've worked hard on it. You're in your first or second year of university, you go through a year of writing the paper with all of this and you come to the review like “Cool, I'm ready to publish”. You're looking at a year, two years for some journals to even peer review your work, and by then you've already applied for graduate jobs or graduate schemes and things like that. So you don't have that paper to your name.

Why did you decide to apply to become an Editor?

I applied to be an editor because Reinvention gives you a pathway into undergraduate research really, really early on. It gives you a stepping stone to be able to publicise when you might otherwise be unable to. Originally I was thinking of applying for a kind of co-editor or sub-editor role, but then I really decided that I'd like to make an impact on the way the journal is published. I'm bringing in some of my passion projects to it and it’s been nice to just get an overview of everything and be able to help people publish. I've always found it really, really hard to get any sort of publication or even get into conferences and things, so I applied for the role of editor because I'm hoping to bring some aspects of social mobility to the paper [...] one big plan is to make it easier for people from widening participation backgrounds to be able to publish, and that's one of the things I thought I might be better placed as the editor rather than a sub-editor.

What is working on the editorial team like?

It is absolutely lovely. I wouldn't change it for the world. It's definitely the best job I've ever had. There's an amazing team and I think we communicate well and have a lot of transparency. It’s hard because we're all from such different subjects, but teamwork is quite a big thing, [we try] to go to the papers that one might be more familiar with helping each other out. Jumping into the role as a team was quite difficult just because we needed to train up from nothing. But it's lovely and, yeah, a lot of communication and organisation is needed but we've got a really good team to do that.

Any advice for students starting their research career and wanting to publish their work?

It's never too early to start looking for places to publish, [...] it can take you a long time to finish those projects. Even if people are saying, “Oh it's you've got ages, you don't need to look for anywhere to publish”, one of the first things I do, when I start a new research project, is think “OK, where am I going to aim to publish” because that makes the timeline in your head a lot clearer. For example, I've been looking at palliative care papers and the length of time they need: if you're applying to [publish in] Reinvention, it's brilliant because we're very responsive and have a shorter waiting time. If you plan where you're going to publish as early on as possible, it makes it easier to time your paper and when it's going to be finished. Don't leave it right till the end when you're done because you want to be thinking about that really early on.

Learn more about the journal and student research opportunities in IATL:

Are you student interested in starting your research journey? Visit Student Research (warwick.ac.uk) 

Are you a member of staff interested in getting involved? Visit Student Research Staff Network Meeting (warwick.ac.uk)

Interested in publishing your research with Reinvention? Find out more at Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research (reinventionjournal.org) or get in touch via reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk