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When a group of graduates from McMaster University’s 2014-2015 MSc Global Health class came up with the idea for the Global Health: Annual Review, their aim was to create a student journal that would share the knowledge and experience of past students with current and prospective ones. As the editorial team put the wheels in motion, they published it as an open access journal through McMaster to provide easier public access and reach a broader range of readers.

Global Health: Annual Review is a compilation of research summary reports, accompanied by the respective students’ profiles, and a selection of student essays on their personal experiences working within global health organizations. The first volume was released in January 2016.

“My feeling is that sharing our class’s research work and knowledge with other global health researchers represents an essential step in the field – utilizing the concepts of knowledge sharing and global health mentorship,” says Sherif Saleh, who has taken the lead on this student-run initiative with journal co-manager Palika Kohli.

When designing the journal outline, Saleh explains that the team chose to focus on summaries of the work rather than including papers in their entirety. “We wanted to allow our audience to read multiple publications, while grasping the main themes of the diverse research work conducted by our class,” says Saleh.

“We also believed this format would enhance global health research discussions and mentorship, by letting prospective students contact past students regarding the entire research paper,” he explains, emphasizing the importance of networking and encouraging a sense of connectedness among students and graduates.

“The fact that the journal is online is also in accordance with the nature of the field of global health as a whole,” explains Kohli. “It is completely accessible, both in terms of time and content, as each summary is written in comprehensible laymen’s words,” she says.

Kohli and Saleh – along with the team of editors Daniela Graziano, Marlee Klaiman, Nicole Conners, and Sunita Kheterpal – aim to release one volume of the Annual Review per year to highlight the new research papers/projects produced by each cohort.

Current students in the MSc GH program who are interested in contributing to the Global Health: Annual Review should contact sharif.saleh94@gmail.com or kohlipk92@gmail.com.