I'm so proud to be a part of The Triple Helix, so I'm going to post something I wrote up for a publications award at Cal for TTH last spring.

The Triple Helix is an international journal that explores the interplay between science, society, and law. The journal was founded only three years ago, but now is the largest student run non-profit organization in the U.S. We have 27 chapters at the most prestigious universities in the nation and around the world including new international chapters in Australia, England, and China. At the Berkeley campus, students are introduced to various areas of the journal including writing, editing, finance and production within the club as well as in our DeCal course. In addition to learning about current topics in science and public policies, students are able to voice their own ideas about the most pressing issues in society today.

      The style of writing is both academic and approachable. While we consider the articles research pieces, its readability and accessibility is reminiscent of that of Times magazine or Scientific American. On top of the background research and professional interviews that we require each writer to make, students also formulate their own conjectures on each topic. Hence, the style is anything but mere objective reporting. The information is presented in an objective manner, and each perspective is counteracted with another perspective; however, the way that students outline the viewpoints that they present in their article as well as adopting an active, inquiring voice are crucial to the interdisciplinary nature of the journal itself. Not only do we want to introduce the most pressing scientific and economic issues in the international scope, but we also want to show that no issue is independent of others, and that they all in some way, shape, or form have social and/or global implications and influences. The point is not to convince the reader of a particular argument, but rather to demonstrate that current issues in science, technology and bioethics are multi-faceted. In such a way, we hope that readers of our journal will gain a heightened awareness of scientific influences in society as well as acquire a new medium and forum for discussion.  

      As far as production goes, the face of the journal has rapidly changed within one year; the journal is now uniform across all chapters with set styles and templates. The body text is in Palatino Linotype, a common serif font that is both readable and cooperative with image manipulations in Adobe InDesign. The production team understands that too many fonts on one page look busy and unprofessional; as a result, we categorized our font styles into body texts and title texts. Body text is consistently Palatino while titles are all in Century Gothic, which is also a font that is versatile in its regular and bold forms, adding a more modern look to the journal on top of the very traditional serif fonts. The various blacks and greys amongst the pages make the best use of a mainly black and white modular-styled journal. In addition, we try to organize the journal in its most assessable form, as it is a compilation of articles from around the world. Therefore, we divided the journal into three main components: the cover feature, the International Features (which are articles that the Editor-in-Chief from each chapter picks from the international pool), and the local articles that are specific to each school.

      Overall, The Triple Helix allows students to be published on campus if not internationally across many chapters; but more importantly, we hope that through the writing process, they will gain new insights into science and its social contexts. As a self-producing publication, students not only learn from what other students write, but they also feel a sense of ownership to the journal and what we hope to achieve as an organization.