Teachers and other staff are encouraged to write articles together with students. Co-writing an article offers students the opportunity to develop their own expertise. Writing an article also prepares them for future working life and related expert communication. LAB, in turn, receives publication points from published articles.
Co-written articles can be submitted to professional journals of your field, as well as to the LAB Pro online journal and the LAB Focus blog. These instructions have been prepared especially with these LAB online publications in mind.
A LAB student (degree student, specialization and continuing education student) is paid a publication fee if they publish with a staff member from LAB University of Applied Sciences. The author who is a member of the staff also receives a small fee for co-publications.
Once a co-article has been published, the author who is a staff member reports the article for the publication data collection in Justus. Please add the text “co-written with a student” as Additional information. After this, the student can apply for a publication fee.
For more detailed information on the terms and conditions of student publication fees and instructions for applying for the fee, please visit LAB's intranet (currently only in Finnish): https://lut.sharepoint.com/sites/intra-lab-tki/SitePages/Julkaisut(1).aspx
LAB Pro online journal and LAB Focus blog also publish co-written articles. Articles are offered directly to the chosen publication, using each publication’s own guidelines and criteria, for example in terms of content and length. LAB Pro's more detailed author guidelines can be found on the LAB Open publishing platform and LAB Focus guidelines on the LAB Focus website. Always read the guidelines carefully before you start writing!
Manuscripts submitted for LAB Pro are sent as a word file to the editorial board at julkaisut@lab.fi. Manuscripts intended for LAB Focus should be sent to the blog editorial board at labfocus@lab.fi.
Staff member's input must be evident in articles co-written with a student. This also applies to articles that are based on the student’s thesis: just supervising the thesis is not considered sufficient. Please keep in mind that as a co-author the staff member is as responsible for the content of the article as the student(s).
Articles based on a thesis can’t be just abstracts: you are not writing about the thesis but should instead bring forward a new perspective that is further explored and discussed in the article. You should also avoid emphasizing the fact that you are writing on the basis of your thesis: you should mention your thesis once and add it to your list of references, but avoid repeated referencing to your thesis in text. Please do not mention your thesis in the introductory paragraph. The article should have at least one third of new or revised material that can’t be found from the published thesis (NB. One third refers to length of the article, not thesis).
While writing, keep in mind your readers: who are you writing to? What new and interesting are you bringing forward? How could you make the text appealing to the readers? The title and introductory paragraph are key in attracting interest to the rest of the article. It is also recommended to pay attention to subheadings and the overall structure of the article.
All LAB’s publishing platforms use the Harvard system of referencing. You can find more detailed instructions on the Citation Guide for LAB Publications.
All manuscripts are reviewed before publication by the editorial board. The editors may ask you to make changes to the manuscript before publication.