UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing team has launched The Behrend Psychology Journal, an open access journal that publishes original research conducted by undergraduate and graduate psychology students at Penn State Behrend in Erie.

The journal began informally in 1995 as a print collection showcasing undergraduate research by students enrolled in the Advanced Research in Psychology course at the Behrend campus. Compiled by faculty and printed solely for the student researchers and their families, the original collection is bound and archived at the University Libraries’ John M. Lilley Library at Penn State Behrend.

As journals increasingly move online, faculty in the Behrend psychology department are reviving the publication in digital form.

Starting fresh from Vol. 1, “The Behrend Psychology Journal” will publish student research from the Advanced Research in Psychology course twice a year using a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License.

The journal is led by two Penn State Behrend faculty members, Editor-in-Chief Lisa Jo Elliott, associate teaching professor, and Associate Editor Daniell DiFrancesca, assistant professor of educational psychology.

Elliott believes the shift to a digital platform will make student research accessible to a much wider audience at Penn State and beyond and expressed gratitude to the students willing to submit their work.

“Thank you to our student authors for the opportunity to publish your hard work,” Elliott said.

Shariffah Rahah Sheik Dawood, associate professor of psychology at Penn State Behrend, proposed the move to the Libraries’ Open Publishing in August 2025. Within a year, the journal officially launched its inaugural issue on the new digital platform.

In the inaugural open access issue’s Forward, Dawood wrote:

“As a supervisor, I have had the privilege of watching these students develop their research from an initial question or idea into completed projects that they have presented at academic conferences and are now sharing through this journal. What readers see in these pages represents months of learning, revision, problem-solving and persistence.”

The editorial team encouraged continued submissions from Penn State Behrend psychology students as the journal builds on its inaugural year.

Penn State University Libraries Open Publishing is the open access imprint of Penn State University Libraries. Open Publishing provides tools and support for Penn State–affiliated authors and groups to publish full-featured electronic scholarly journals, searchable annotated bibliographies and monographs using a variety of digital platforms. All publications are free to view online and download. Copyright is retained by the individual authors where possible, or by the journals or sponsoring entity. Almost all are licensed for use under a Creative Commons license.

For more information about the program, visit openpublishing.psu.edu or contact the Open Publishing team at openpublishing@psu.edu.