Meredith Sides, Ed.D.
English Instructor, Calhoun Community College
President Emeritus, National Organization for Student Success
President Emeritus, Alabama Student Success Organization
As you may know, the National Organization for Student Success (NOSS) has two publication opportunities: Practitioner to Practitioner (PtoP) and the Journal of the National Organization for Student Success (J-NOSS). One of my goals as the Founding Editor of J-NOSS is to de-mystify the (usually unnecessarily complicated) publication process, and I feel strongly that there are many very capable writers and researchers in ALSSO, particularly, who may just need a little nudge to get started. Consider this your nudge!
PtoP is NOSS’s journal that is not peer-reviewed, meaning that submitted articles are reviewed only by the editor who may accept them without requiring much editing to them. PtoP is an excellent place to share innovative practices you might do in your classroom, strategies for retention, best practices for student services, and other topics that relate to student success. These articles are fairly short and are more informal than a typical journal article. They may or may not be researched and include references.
J-NOSS, on the other hand, is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that seeks to publish formal articles. Multiple peer reviewers who have expertise in the subject matter, methodology, or publication read each submitted manuscript. The peer reviewers do not know who wrote the article they are reading, and the author of the article does not know who is doing the peer reviewing, hence the “double-blind” nature of the process, which helps reduce the potential for bias and increases objectivity. Authors typically need to revise their articles before they will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. In addition to publication, you also have the opportunity to serve as a peer reviewer for J-NOSS. One of our best peer reviewers shared with me that she chose to become a peer reviewer because she had previously personally found the publication process intimidating and wanted to both help herself get over her fears and help others improve their work at the same time. Peer reviewers do not have to be experts in publishing or have published many articles; we need lots of subject-matter specialists, too!
The student success professionals of Alabama have a lot of good things to share. In a state that seems like it is in some sort of turmoil all the time, what is constant is the dedication with which our student success professionals do their work, adapting and innovating the best they can within the constraints the state has given them. It is important to lift the voices of Alabama educational professionals and their students to the national and international levels, and publishing your work in PtoP or J-NOSS is an excellent way to get that started.
I hope to conduct a mini-workshop/concurrent session at the ALSSO conference this year to go into more depth about the J-NOSS publication process and about article writing in general, but if you have any questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out to me to ask! You can contact me at msides@thenoss.org or meredith.sides1@calhoun.edu.
I look forward to reading your articles in PtoP or seeing them submitted to J-NOSS!
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