Welcome to the Medical Student Press: Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Dear Readers,

I am delighted to welcome you all to the Medical Student Press through the launching of the MSPress Blog. In merely five months, the MSPress has grown to have an international team of medical students serving as editors, peer reviewers, graphic designers, and writers. Our journal has had countless submissions and our diverse blog writers are eager to share their experiences with the medical student community at large. We have made incredible strides and welcome all of those interested in supporting the scholarly expression of medical students to join our team (see application: here).

Beginnings

This project was inspired by of one of my dearest professors at Stanford University, Professor John Willinsky. In my junior year, I decided to take a course entitled “Learning, Sharing, Publishing, and Intellectual Property” through the School of Education. I found myself in a beautiful turret providing a beautiful view of the sunset. In this course, Professor Willinsky taught about the classical and current debates within the publishing world. He explored modern methods of sharing educational resources, and taught us the specifics of John Locke’s theories concerning the commons (Professor Willinsky’s book on this topic is currently in the making). I stayed in the course for the rest of the semester, enjoyed the sunset, and gleaned as much as I could from this publishing giant.

Soon, I began working closely with Professor Willinsky and one of his projects: Open Journal Systems. This open-access software enables editorial teams to collaborate within a seamless online platform. Further, it publishes content that is widely-indexed, thereby providing journal submissions with the opportunity to be widely read and cited. I worked with OJS during my Stanford years as EIC of Intersect: the Stanford Journal of Science, Technology and Society. After the journal was live for three years, it became international and was strongly cited by other scholars (see the Intersect citation line-up here).

The Medical Student Press

An MS1 at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, I was determined to find a way to continue working with publishing. The MSPress began as a collaboration between myself and Gabriel Glaun, an MS1 at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. We were both involved with scholarly publishing in our undergraduate years and sought out an opportunity to continue this involvement as medical students; a search I assumed would be similar to bumbling through Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel. While we easily found well-established medical publishers, we surprisingly did not find any large-scale projects that were exclusively for and by medical students. Further, the collaboration between international medical students was one that was seldom seen. A well-indexed, organized, easily accessible, international, and approachable medical student publishing organization was clearly needed, and so our work on the MSPress began.

After a great deal of work and support from other medical students, I am elated to make our medical student publishing organization live. We operate using Open Journal Systems and support open-access publishing through our use of a Creative Commons license for all of our content. Currently under our auspices are The MSPress Journal and The MSPress Blog.

The MSPress Journal accepts research essays, theses excerpts, interviews, scientific papers, medical ethics essays, creative writing, sound pieces, and visual art pieces.  This platform runs directly through the Open Journal System, ensuring our articles are widely disseminated and strongly published.

The MSPress Blog supports those students interested in long term writing, as well as those interested in occasional writing. This platform accepts informal pieces, narratives, sound pieces, visual art pieces, news articles, and pilot studies.

Recognizing that medicine is dynamic, we aim to support the ideas of all students. Get in touch with our team to share your creative ideas. The education of medical students continues far after class and clinic sessions are over. Remain engaged, expressive, and innovative by contributing to the MSPress. We are proud to support the scholarly expression of medical students and welcome all readers, contributors, and creative minds.

We are a versatile team with an exciting new project that is full of potential, so to stay up to date with us, follow our blog, our Facebook page, and our website.

Cheers to the scholarly expression of medical students,

Mica Esquenazi

The MSPress, Editor-in-Chief

Mica Esquenazi

Mica is a member of the University of Rochester School of Medicine Class of 2017. She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in Science, Technology, and Society, and a B.A. in Medical Anthropology. She works as a clinical researcher within the University of Rochester Medical Center's Department of Otolaryngology and Burn Surgery Division. She previously served on AMWA's National Student Executive Board as Secretary and as a clinical researcher for VisualDx. She also served as local president of her school's AMA and AMWA chapters. Mica is pursuing a career in otolaryngology.