How can a science journal tailored for high school students obtain help from university professors?

General thoughts: 1.  Are academics able to have co-authorship?  This (in addition to the intrinsic reward of working with HS students) would benefit professors from a service perspective (we're supposed to engage in the community, promote the university) and add publications to their records (the currency of academia).  For faculty at more teaching-focused universities, like smaller private schools, this might be very well received.  2.  Do faculty mentor HS students long distance?  If so, covering some basic skills in project management (how to write professional emails, guidelines for managing the project) would be critical to teach students.  As an early career professor I can attest that many students are missing basic communication skills for communicating and working in professional contexts.  Having guidance and a structure for completing projects in place would be extremely useful.  If a student is having trouble communicating with the chosen faculty member, the student should be able to contact someone (the high school teacher?) to problem solve and provide guidance. 3.  Maybe faculty can submit ideas they feel would be suitable to work on with HS students.  This could be posted online, or in some forum, and students could contact faculty with ideas they would like to pursue.  4.  Perhaps a mentoring system similar to the one for completing the project could be instituted for peer review.  A high school student and a faculty member could review a paper, sharing thoughts and the student could learn not only how to think critically about research and constructs, but also how to effectively write and organize feedback - hugely important skills. Those are some of my initial thoughts!  I'm happy to provide further suggestions.  This is a great opportunity for students and faculty!!

I feel bad for dropping the ball on this one (someone asked me to answer it).  My apologies.  At any rate, I think your project looks absolutely fantastic and I think you could get a fair amount of assistance from scientists who are also interested in education.  In my field (physics), we have a whole organization that brings together all levels of physics research and education - the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).  They publish one of my favorite research journals, the American Journal of Physics.  You might consider contacting them about this.  Even the American Physical Society (APS) is really big on this.  I would guess there are similar organizations in Biology and Chemistry. The other suggestion I might have for you is to contact the physics education listserv.  I'm not on it, but one of my colleagues is.  There are a lot of university level faculty on it and I would bet they'd be quite willing to help.  Again, I would  be surprised if there weren't similar organizations and connections in Biology and Chemistry. One general place to look is at liberal arts colleges.  Faculty at such colleges often have a high level of interest in things of this nature.

In light of the advice you already have above - I would only add that there are many organizations nationwide in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) who exist solely to provide outreach between professional scientists and educators and students. I would be sure to contact someone nationally to ask where the best fit might be between your journal and the "review" or advisory board you seek. http://www.stemedcoalition.org/

These are great answers. Another idea might be to contact faculty members at a local university who participate in science/medical outreach research programs for high school students. These faculty members might be more inclined to peer review. For example, my alma mater has a program called REACH (Research Experience and Awareness of Clinical Health). http://www.utoledo.edu/offices/oid/outreach.html

Ex-professor here, who worked a lot with kids. You don't have to obtain our help.  Just ask.  We love it. However, and this is extremely important.  Don't stop us.  We know that what we are doing is rude, crude, and socially acceptable.  It's just a fact that every act of teaching is a subversive, revolutionary act diametrically opposed to education.  Teaching serves to inspire, tighten, and, well, teach.  Education serves to flatten out, to make dull, to turn people in Frank Zappa's words into loyal plastic robots for a world that doesn't care. I remember when they used to bring groups of kids in, always with a teacher present.  Because I was doing the visualization, it was a good show.  The kids always asked, what courses should you take in school to learn how to do this kind of thing.  I knew that question was on a list somewhere.  I was not fooled. I replied honestly.  You are never going to learn this in school, because by the time it gets to school, it's too old to be exciting.  There are some things that help, such as linear algebra, but most high schools don't teach them.  What you have to do is develop a passion and go find out for yourself, in spite of your education. There were heartbreaking moments.  There was this young girl, maybe about 11, who was fascinated with the civil war and wanted to use visualization and terrain calculations to find out more about battlefield conditions.  Fascinating idea, and it was a fairly hot research topic at the time, about the time of the Gulf War.  I so wanted to work with her.  The results might even be publishable today.  But it was just impossible, due to the Lacoonian intestinal torpor of the educumators. Do everything you can to make sure that doesn't happen to your volunteers.  We just barely survived attempts by the educational system to pith and stupefy us.

I think that this is a project with lots of merit.  Finding faculty staff with enough time and inclination to help with the mentoring is always going to be difficult, but all you can do is ask. My suggestion (which I see is similar to what Janice has said) would be to aim for education faculties as some of them will be interested in it from their research perspectives, rather than just as a service.  Lots of the professional societies for the different disciplines have education chapters and they may also be more inclined to play an active role in this sort of project. The other comment I would make is that professional journals split the tasks of peer review and editing/proofing.  The peer reviewer will often comment if they find typographical or grammatical errors, but lots of work is also done by the journal editorial staff making sure that the final paper fits the journal style and conventions.  You may not want to impose rigid style guides or conventions because its a lot of extra work and probably secondary to what you are trying to achieve, but there may be english or journalism students who might be interested in participating in that side of the project as useful experience for them.

Hi. I just tweeted your request and the URL of this thread, and I've got a fair number of physics/science education types among my tweeps. Maybe that will scare up some help…

Offer to add an outreach/broader impacts section to the NSF grants of one or more local science professors. As a bonus you can probably request funding to support research of the high school students in the Prof. labs over the summer (see programs like ACS SEED).

Let's face reality, most college science teachers are more interested in their scientific subgroup, than in science education. However, there is a small proportion of college science teachers who are dedicated to education.  The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is a group of dedicated educators. They publish "The Physics Teacher" magazine which contains articles published by both college and high school teachers. AAPT holds two national meetings and numerous local monthly meetings dedicated to physics education. All science teachers are welcome to attend the meetings and present papers. I would contact your local AAPT section, go to a meeting and get to know the members.