TL;DR: The International Journal of High School Research (IJHSR) publishes research by high school students from any country, after outside reviewers check each paper. You can send in your paper any time of year, and submitting is free. You'll only pay a publication fee if your paper is accepted. And since IJHSR publishes every month, it takes many more papers than a once-a-year journal like CJSJ.
If you're a high schooler who has just finished a research project, you might be looking for a place to publish it. To get published in IJHSR, you need to follow its template exactly and pass review by outside experts.
What is the International Journal of High School Research?
IJHSR is a journal that publishes original research and literature reviews by high school students. Terra Science and Education, a nonprofit in Syracuse, New York, has published IJHSR since 2019. Faculty and professionals review the papers, and anyone can read the published articles for free. Libraries and students can find the articles through EBSCO's research databases and Google Scholar (IJHSR home page).
IJHSR has three journals, and you choose the one that matches your paper's main focus. Here's what each one covers (IJHSR submission guidelines).
Natural and Physical Sciences: biology, biomedical science, chemistry, physics, astronomy, Earth science, and environmental science.
Engineering and Computer Science: every major branch of engineering, plus AI, machine learning, bioinformatics, data science, computer systems, and software engineering.
Business and Social Sciences: fields like economics, finance, education, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology.
If your project mixes fields, pick the IJHSR journal that fits your main research question. Say you built a machine learning model that reads medical data. If the editors think another journal fits better, they can move your paper there.
Is the International Journal of High School Research legit?
In our view, IJHSR is a legitimate student journal with real expert review. IJHSR checks every paper for plagiarism and AI use. Then it sends the papers that pass to two or more outside reviewers. IJHSR doesn't publish an acceptance rate. It puts out new issues every month, so it has room for far more papers than a yearly journal. Its publisher, Terra Science and Education, is a registered nonprofit with a 2025 GuideStar Platinum Transparency Seal, a rating for open reporting.
With an IJHSR paper, you can show colleges that you finished a real project and that outside reviewers checked your work. Still, what you learned and how well you can explain it matter more than the journal's name. Before you submit, read two or three recent papers in your field on the IJHSR home page. Then compare your methods with theirs.
Who can submit to IJHSR?
High school students from any country can submit to IJHSR, on their own or with their mentors. IJHSR doesn't list a grade range, so if you've just graduated, ask the editor before you submit.
You can send IJHSR either a research article with your own new data or a review article about published studies. Here's how the two differ.
Research article: You share original research and data you produced yourself. Say you compared two machine learning models on a public dataset and reported what you found.
Review article: You pull together published research on one question, with no new experiments. IJHSR accepts only two or three review articles per issue, so a review is the harder route. For a review, IJHSR also asks you to suggest 3 to 6 expert reviewers. Each needs a PhD or more than ten years in the field.
Whichever type you choose, you'll need a good question, and you can find one with these research ideas in computer science. If you want to write an AI paper someday but haven't coded yet, you can start with Veritas AI's AI Scholars program. You don't need any coding experience, since you'll begin with Python fundamentals. Each mentor teaches just 5 students in live online classes. You'll also team up with 3 or 4 other students on an AI project.
How much does it cost to publish in IJHSR?
Submitting to IJHSR is free, and you pay the $350 publication fee only if your paper is accepted. In the US, you may qualify for a reduced-fee or full-fee scholarship if you get free or reduced-price school lunch. You can ask for it once your paper is accepted and IJHSR requests the fee. Message the editor through the Terra Journals App, and include documentation from your school. If something else makes the fee hard for your family, you can ask about a waiver too.
Here are the other key facts, as of November 2026 (IJHSR submission guidelines):
Deadline: none. IJHSR takes papers all year.
Time to a decision: usually about 1 to 3 months.
Time to publication: about 2 to 3 more months after acceptance, so 3 to 6 months in all.
Where to submit: the Terra Journals App. IJHSR doesn't take papers by email.
How to format a paper for IJHSR
To format a paper for IJHSR, write it in the journal's official template from your very first draft. IJHSR won't consider papers that don't use its templates. Here are 5 rules to check.
Pick the right template. Download the research article template or the review article template. Keep its fonts and headings exactly as they are.
Stay within 15 pages. That's single-spaced text in 10-point Arial, not counting tables and figures.
Keep your abstract short. Write one paragraph of 200 words or fewer, with no citations. You'll also paste your abstract and keywords into the app, and they must match your paper exactly.
Cite in ACS style. ACS is the citation style of the American Chemical Society. Check every reference against the original source. IJHSR can reject a paper without review for several wrong or broken references.
Explain how you made each figure. Add a short note naming the tools you used, like Python or Excel, plus any AI tool. You'll also send each figure separately as a PNG file of at least 300 dpi, named to match its caption.
What are IJHSR's rules on AI use?
IJHSR lets you use AI for a few support tasks, but AI can't write your paper or interpret your results. Here's how the policy breaks down (IJHSR submission guidelines).
Allowed if you keep records: brainstorming ideas, writing starter code, and making figures. Keep a log of your prompts, and label and cite any code or figures AI helped make.
Allowed with limits: grammar tips on text you wrote yourself, ideas for statistical tests, and bibliography formatting. You still choose the method, interpret the data, and check every citation yourself.
Not allowed: using AI to write your research plan, abstract, or any section of your paper. AI also can't add arguments, write your conclusions, collect or make up data, or create a starter bibliography.
You need an AI Acknowledgement statement in every IJHSR paper, even if you didn't use AI at all. If IJHSR finds AI use you didn't disclose, it can reject or retract your paper. It won't refund your fee. So keep a running note of every AI tool you use and what it did. You can use some AI research tools to find papers, but you still need to read each one yourself.
How to submit to IJHSR, step by step
You submit to IJHSR through the Terra Journals App, and an editor checks your paper before any reviewer sees it. Here are the 4 steps.
Choose your journal and article type. Match the journal to your main research question, and the template to your article type.
Settle your author list. Student authors go first. If a mentor played a vital role, list them as a supervisor, teacher, or mentor. You can't change the list after acceptance.
Submit through the app. Create an account and upload your paper, named LastName_FirstName, or LastName_LastName_LastName for a team. Then upload each figure as its own PNG file, named to match its caption.
Answer every reviewer comment. If reviewers ask for changes, fix each point, or explain clearly why you see it differently.
How to get published in IJHSR
In the strongest IJHSR papers, students make one clear point and show every step, so reviewers can follow the work. Here are 4 tips to get there.
Say what your paper adds. Don't stop at which model scored highest. Explain why the comparison matters and how your result builds on earlier studies. Framing your contribution is a key step when you write an AI research paper in high school.
Make your methods repeatable. For a machine learning project, give the dataset's source, how you cleaned it, your model settings, and how you measured accuracy.
Read every paper you cite. Check the authors, title, and DOI, which is the permanent ID number of a published paper.
Get feedback, then give yourself time. Ask a teacher or mentor to read your draft before you submit. If you'd like your paper published before your college applications, aim to submit 9 months to a year ahead.
FAQs
Is ijhsr.org the official IJHSR website?
No, ijhsr.org belongs to a different journal, the International Journal of Health Sciences and Research. The official IJHSR site is ijhsr.terrajournals.org.
Do you need a mentor to publish in IJHSR?
No, you can submit on your own, and a mentor doesn't have to be an author. IJHSR says students should have a mentor, teacher, or professional guiding them through publishing. If you know some Python and want to run your own AI study, you can apply to Veritas AI's AI Fellowship. With a mentor at your side for 15 one-on-one sessions, you design and run the study yourself. Then you work with a publication specialist for 4 sessions to shape it into a paper you can submit.
Can you send the same paper to IJHSR and another journal?
IJHSR won't publish work that's already been published somewhere else. IJHSR doesn't say whether you can send one paper to two journals at once, so ask the editor through the app first. Until you hear back, send your paper to one journal at a time.
What happens if IJHSR rejects your paper?
If IJHSR rejects your paper, you can fix the problems the reviewers named and send it to another journal. You can compare your other options in our list of high school research journals. You can also use IJHSR's list of common rejection reasons as a checklist before you submit. It includes plagiarism, made-up data, references no one can check, undisclosed AI use, unclear English, and ignoring the format rules.
Official IJHSR pages to check
IJHSR's own pages have the latest rules and fees.
IJHSR home page: recent issues and the three journals.
Submission guidelines: fees, scholarships, formatting, the AI policy, and the FAQ.
Research article template: the required layout and AI Acknowledgement wording.
Terra Journals App: where you submit.
Turn Your Research Into a Paper With Veritas AI
If you'd like your next paper to be an AI study, you can plan it from the start with Veritas AI. A Veritas AI mentor can help you turn a question you care about into a finished AI study. Mentors at Veritas AI include researchers at Anthropic, Meta, and NVIDIA. More than 3,200 students from over 160 countries have joined Veritas AI programs. Veritas AI students saw 79% of their submitted papers accepted, according to Veritas AI internal data. To pick your starting point, you can look through Veritas AI's programs.