Aims and scope

Emergent Scientist is an open access international scientific journal dedicated to a student authorship and readership, and to lesser extent to teachers and researchers. Emergent Scientist is intended to provide students with accessible scientific material and to offer them a first publishing experience. For senior scientists, Emergent Scientist can be used to provide teaching material and can constitute an introduction to questions out of the reader’s area of expertise.

Origins of the project

Emergent Scientist started in 2016 at the instigation of the French Physical Society (SFP). After hosting the 8th edition of the International Physicists' Tournament, the SFP suggested to add value to the work of the participants and offer them to turn their reports into peer-reviewed publications. The idea of expanding this chance to any student willing to learn about scientific publication quickly emerged, and gave birth to EmSci.

Emergent Scientist would not exist without its supports and sponsors.

Scope and coverage

Emergent Scientist aims at offering a peer-review experience to all scientific students. Currently, we welcome submissions from three scientific fields: physics, mathematics and chemistry.

Materials published in Emergent Scientist must satisfy both scientific and pedagogical requirements. They are not expected to be ground-breaking results and can even focus on well-known phenomena, but they must constitute a scientific and didactic approach to the solution of the problem. Their motivations, methods and results must be clearly understandable by a reader in undergraduate training, and help him or her improve his or her own apprehension of science.

Special volumes are yearly issues dedicated to student competitions, such as the International Physicists’ Tournament. These gather materials submitted by the participants and are inspired by the problems discussed during the competition.

Regular volumes are periodically issued. These gather materials submitted by the authors on any subject within the scope of the journal, inspired for instance by university research project, course projects or personal work.

Science and scientific method

Emergent Scientist offers young scientists a unique perspective on the scientific method in the absence of the competition that exists between authors in the race towards novelty and success.

Notably, an original “dead-end” section in the articles identifies theoretical leads and experimental tests that were followed and which were unsuccessful. This is encouraged whether the reason for failure is understood or not. However, authors are encouraged to reflect upon their experimental and theoretical approach to explain the reason why a particular avenue of enquiry may have failed.

Furthermore, in order to provide a transparent reviewing process, the first proposal of each accepted paper is published alongside with its proofread version.

Several publications on the same topic may be found side-by-side to illustrate the diversity of the approaches that can be used in solving complex problems.