A course journal showcases papers writen by scholars that result from what they've learned through coursework, research, and other scholastic activities. Students are often asked to demonstrate the knowledge they have gained in a class by writing a paper. However, usually only the instructor ever reads these papers. These "disposable papers" are a tremendous waste of creativity, methodological innovation, and scientific effort. Publishing these papers in a course journal provides an opportunity for students to share important and novel findings, and to be credited for their work, with a larger scientific audience. Course journals also allow students to practice scientific rigor and knowledge sharing as they engage in the peer review process and open access publishing.

We coined the term "Lo-Fi" -- Low Financial Impact Publishing -- for Roos and 42nd as an alternative to the increasingly high financial barrier associated with other forms of open access publishing. Many for-profit journals charge thousands of dollars in article processing fees to publish a single paper. For students and junior academics, these high fees make it nearly impossible to share new methods and findings as papers based on the course journal model. Lo-Fi publishing charges no fees, or only the minimal fees needed to run a modern online peer-reviewed open access journal.