Oregon Tech Faculty and Students Collaborate on Journal Publication

Oregon Tech Communication Studies Assistant Professor Riley Richards, Ph.D., believes in taking his students on the journey with him to apply research to the field of communication, recently working with three students to do a deep dive into 37 years of publications of The Northwest Journal of Communication (NWJC).

Although the students have since graduated, the analysis was published in the Spring 2024 issue of the journal. Melissa Lee, Mindy Miranda, and Joey Potts were Communication Studies students in Richards' research methods class, a course that teaches students to become critical thinkers and apply scholarly methods to gather and analyze data.

"Research like this helps students build confidence and tackle projects they otherwise wouldn't," Richards said. "I wanted my research methods students to fully experience the journal review process and understand why peer-reviewed journal articles are the gold standard for research-what better way to learn than to go through the process."

Richards says the Oregon Tech Communication department has a long history with the Northwest Communication Association (the association that oversees the NWJC), including four past presidents from Oregon Tech: Drs. Goodnow [2010], Brown [2014], Koehn [2023], Schnackenberg [2025], and a past journal editor, Dr. Andrea McCracken, 2018-2023.

After serving as Associate Editor of the NWJC, Richards wanted to gain a robust knowledge of its history and possible future avenues to take with the journal as he applied for Editor. He felt that the best way to do so and serve the journal audience was to analyze the articles published within the journal and the process scholars went through to achieve publication.

"Very few undergraduate students ever publish," Richards said. "The review process is logistically long, let alone the emotional impact of having your ideas challenged. It takes a lot of work for prospective authors to understand if their manuscript would be a good fit and well-received in a specific journal. Our study does the heavy lifting for prospective authors to identify if their manuscript would fit the journal well."

While Lee, Miranda, and Potts have all since graduated, current students who are taking the same class can use this as an example of how their research can be applied.

Richards says that he has a similar analysis in progress with students in his research methods class, studying the Florida Communication Journal, and hopes to finish it this academic year.

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