CJSJ does not review papers the way a journal does. It runs three elimination rounds — quarterfinalists in October, semifinalists in November, finalists in December — and publishes the survivors in March. The 2026–27 window closed on 30 September. No fee is advertised, and no DOI, indexing or acceptance rate is published.
Most guides describe CJSJ as a journal. The structure on its own site is closer to a competition, and that difference changes both what you should submit and what a placing is worth.
When is the deadline?
The 2026–27 window opened on 2 June 2026 and closed on 30 September 2026.
If you are reading this in October, you have missed it, and nothing on the internet will change that. The next window should open around June 2027 on the same pattern.
| Stage | Date (2026–27 cycle) |
|---|---|
| Submissions open | 2 June 2026 |
| Deadline | 30 September 2026 |
| Quarterfinalists announced | 30 October 2026 |
| Semifinalists announced | 20 November 2026 |
| Finalists announced | 11 December 2026 |
| Issue published | 26 March 2027 |
Those dates come from the journal's own site. Check them there and nowhere else. When we compared against third-party listings, one widely-cited aggregator gave the opening date as 6 July and the founding year as 2006; the journal states 2 June and 2015. Guides in this sector copy each other and go stale, which is a general hazard worth internalising before you plan a submission cycle around someone's blog post.
How does the review actually work?
As three elimination rounds, not as a review-and-revise cycle.
That is the structural fact everything else follows from. An ordinary journal reads your paper, sends comments, and gives you a chance to revise. CJSJ announces quarterfinalists, then semifinalists, then finalists, and publishes the survivors. There is no published revision stage.
Two consequences for you.
What you submit is what gets judged. There is no second draft. A paper with a fixable methods problem does not get the note telling you to fix it — it simply does not appear on the next list. So the work has to be finished before it goes in, not finished-ish.
A placing is worth describing even without publication. Quarterfinalist and semifinalist are real, dated outcomes from a competitive process. If you reach one of those rounds and go no further, you can say so accurately on an application, which is more than most student publishing offers.
The journal does not state who conducts the reviews or how many people read each paper. Think.Check.Submit. tells authors to establish whether review involves "independent/external reviewers, how many reviewers per paper." CJSJ does not answer that question on its public pages, and neither do most venues in this category.
What is the Columbia connection?
CJSJ is a spin-off of the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal, established in 2015 and supported by CUSJ's leadership.
That is a genuine link to a student publication run at Columbia. It is not a link to Columbia's admissions office, and the distinction matters because the word "Columbia" in a journal name does a lot of work in this market that it has not earned.
The general version of this point was put on the record by a University of Oxford spokesperson, quoted in Cherwell by Timothy Blackburn in August 2026: "summer programmes are entirely separate to the University's undergraduate and graduate admissions processes." That was said about summer schools rather than journals, and the separation it describes is the same one. A university's name attached to a student-run activity does not route back to its admissions decisions.
What does it cost?
Nothing we could find.
No submission fee and no publication fee is advertised on the journal's pages. In this category that is genuinely unusual and it is the strongest thing about the venue.
For comparison, across the journals a school student is most likely to meet:
| Journal | At submission | On acceptance | Paid fast track |
|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia Junior Science Journal | None advertised | None advertised | None |
| Journal of Emerging Investigators | $49 | — | Refused outright |
| National High School Journal of Science | Free | — | $280 |
| Journal of Student Research | $50 | $299 | $300 + service fee |
| Curieux Academic Journal | — | $200–$250 | Closed to submissions |
The joint COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME principles state at Principle 13 that "author fees or waiver status should not influence editorial decision making." A venue with no fees at all cannot fall foul of that, which removes the single most common objection to student publishing in one stroke.
Is it indexed? Does it assign DOIs?
No claim either way, which we read as no.
The site makes no indexing claim and no DOI claim. Iowa State's guidance on predatory publishing lists false indexing claims among the warning signs, so making none is better than making a bad one. But the practical effect is that a CJSJ publication is a page on a website. If that site reorganises in four years, your citable record may not survive it.
If a permanent identifier matters to you — and it does if you expect to cite your own work in a university application, a dissertation or a later paper — JEI assigns DOIs and charges $49 to submit. That is the trade.
What should you submit?
Original research or a review article in the sciences, finished.
The journal accepts both original research papers and review articles across scientific fields, which is broader than JEI, where a literature review has no natural home. If your project summarises and synthesises existing work rather than producing new data, CJSJ is one of the few venues where that is not an automatic mismatch.
What will not work is a project you are still finishing in September. The absence of a revision round makes the deadline absolute in a way that rolling-review journals are not.
Where we fit
The Oxford Centre for Advanced Research runs 1:1 mentorships with PhD candidates and early-career researchers at Oxford, Cambridge, other leading UK universities and Ivy League institutions. The Oxford Scholar Programme is £2,000 — about $2,600 — for ten contact hours over ten to fourteen weeks. The Oxford Publication Fellowship is £3,400, roughly $4,400, and is built around getting a project to submission standard.
We submit to the Oxford Journal of Student Scholarship, the Journal of Research High School and Vanderbilt's Young Scientist Journal, through standard review. All three reject student work, ours included. We are not affiliated with the University of Oxford and we state that rather than leaving it to be inferred.
We would point a student with finished science work at CJSJ before any paid venue, because it costs nothing and cannot be bought. The constraint is the calendar, not the quality bar.
The thing to do now
Open the journal's own submissions page and read the date on it.
If the window is shut, that is a nine-month runway rather than a dead end — long enough to do the work properly instead of rushing something into a venue that will take it faster.
Frequently asked questions
When is the Columbia Junior Science Journal deadline?
The 2026–27 cycle opened on 2 June 2026 and closed on 30 September 2026. If you are reading this after that date, the window has passed and the next one is expected to open around June 2027. The journal publishes its dates on its own site, which is the only place worth checking — third-party listings had both the opening date and the founding year wrong when we checked.
Does CJSJ charge a fee?
No fee is advertised anywhere we could find on the journal's site. That is unusual in this category and it is a point in its favour — most of the venues a school student will encounter charge either at submission or on acceptance, and several sell expedited review on top.
How does the review process work?
As elimination rounds rather than peer review in the ordinary sense. Quarterfinalists are announced on 30 October, semifinalists on 20 November, finalists on 11 December, and the issue is published on 26 March. The journal does not state who reviews papers or how many reviewers see each one.
Is it affiliated with Columbia University?
It is a spin-off of the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal, established in 2015 and supported by CUSJ's leadership. That is a real connection to a student publication at Columbia. It is not a statement that the University of Columbia endorses, reviews or evaluates the work, and no admissions advantage follows from publishing there.
Does CJSJ assign DOIs?
Not that we could establish — the site makes no DOI claim and no indexing claim. Without a DOI your paper is a page on a website rather than a permanently citable record, which matters if you want to reference your own work in a future application or dissertation.
Is it worth submitting to?
If you have finished original work in the sciences and the window is open, yes — it costs nothing and the staged structure means a quarterfinalist or semifinalist placing is itself something you can describe honestly. If your project is a literature review, look elsewhere; CJSJ wants original research and review articles in the sciences.