The initiative
About OSRI
The Okanagan Student Research Initiative is a student-run publishing venue for secondary school research in the Okanagan Valley, founded in 2026.
Mission
OSRI exists to support high school students that aspire to start or continue their research journey. We help Okanagan students who do real research publish without the burden of costs, high selectivity, or the time it takes for IRB or REB approval. Additionally, we incentivise research by suggesting research questions in our question bank and matching them with public data streams.
The problem
Publishing research as a secondary student can be difficult, and two things make it so. First is incentive: publishing work can be challenging and high selectivity may drive students to stop doing what they love, resulting in precious work that accumulates the digital equivalent of dust on their computer. The second problem is ethics approval. Research involving people is normally reviewed by an institutional Research Ethics Board, but REBs only have authority over research done under their own institution's auspices. An independent student has no board to apply to, and a formal review, where one can be found, takes longer than a school term.
OSRI is by no means an REB. It provides a published, minimal-risk standard, a panel that applies it, and a venue that is honest about what its review means.
What OSRI does
- Suggests research questions. Every question in the question bank is matched with at least one dataset or source and an ethics tier.
- Publishes papers. Full-length student manuscripts, reviewed by two reviewers and an editor, hosted permanently with a DOI.
- Publishes mini-papers. One- to three-paragraph pieces that make a single claim with evidence, reviewed by an editor.
- Publishes a research ethics standard, and will open to human-participant research once a faculty-chaired panel is in place. Studies that meet the green or yellow tier are eligible for publication. Red-tier studies are declined, with an explanation.
Ethics Review Panel
The panel assigns each human participant study to a tier, confirms that consent and permission were handled as described, and signs off before content review begins. It is chaired by a faculty advisor with research ethics experience and includes student editors. Its standard follows the Regeneron ISEF rules for human participant research and is reviewed annually.
OSRI ethics review is not IRB or REB approval and does not substitute for it. It certifies that a study met OSRI's published standard and is eligible for publication at OSRI.
Join OSRI
Faculty advisor
Having just opened, OSRI is seeking one faculty member at UBC Okanagan or Okanagan College, ideally with REB experience, to chair the Ethics Review Panel. The commitment is a short review of each human participant submission, roughly one to two hours a month, and an annual review of the standard.
Reviewers
Graduate students, teachers and researchers in the region are invited to join the reviewer pool. A review takes about ninety minutes, and reviewers are credited by name on this site, which is a legitimate line on a CV.
Student editors
High achieving students in Grades 10, 11, and 12 at any Okanagan secondary school may apply to join the editorial board. Editors learn how peer review works from the inside, and the board is built to outlast its founder, Kaan Oytac.
Contact
Editorial, ethical, and general enquiries: osri.editors@gmail.com
Land acknowledgement
OSRI operates on the unceded traditional territory of the Syilx Okanagan people. Research that concerns the Syilx Okanagan Nation, its lands, language or members is undertaken only with the Nation's engagement, following TCPS 2 Chapter 9 and the OCAP® principles.