The Research-Based Argument (RBA) is the capstone assignment in Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) courses, challenging students to craft well-supported, focused arguments that draw on scholarly research and diverse perspectives. In this intensive writing and revision process, RBAs evolve from proposals, annotated bibliographies, TIC’s, peer reviews, and reflective memos.
To publish an RBA as a journal article requires even further refinement. Some students draw on later coursework to enhance their ideas, while others reframe their arguments entirely. GRACE: Global Review of AI Community Ethics Stanford’s student run, peer-reviewed, international journal, which launched in 2022, welcomes interdisciplinary scholarship on the global social impact of artificial intelligence (AI). Founding editors are Isabel Gallegos, Muhammad Khattak, Bethel Bayau, Nour Mary Aissaoui, Ruth Ann Armstrong, Christian Davis, Kendall Beache, and Julia Kwak. The journal receives 3000+ submissions a year and pays editors $35 an hour from an NSF grant.
GRACE offers an extended time to rethink the RBA and similar college writing assignments from around the globe. Unlike the ten week quarter where students work towards the final paper, this undergraduate journal has a nine month publishing cycle with multiple conversations back-and-forth for developing.
In the following interviews, students share their experiences transforming their PWR papers into published work for GRACE, describing insights into the challenges, revisions, and transformations. Lila Shroff’s paper continues to be the most downloaded on the site, averaging over 700 downloads per day. The two linked papers are from volume 2024, the others are forthcoming in 2025. Interview questions were the same for each author.
- How did your paper grow out of your PWR writing experience?
- What advice would you give to students looking to refine their coursework into a publication-ready paper?
Harvesting Hope
Author: Ava Acevedo
I used the research skills I gained in PWR1 and PWR2 to develop the paper and other projects that grew out of the RBA. I interviewed Oaxacan women farmworkers in Watsonville about their experiences working through wildfire smoke. Both courses helped me develop my paper as well as the forthcoming Stanford Art for Environmental play Hidden Strawberries. For students interested in submitting to the journal,] I would emphasize the power of detailed stories/anecdotes in illustrating the challenge and areas for hope. I would also encourage them to seek feedback from potential audience members and ask them what they would like to see more/less of in the paper.
AI & Copyright: A Case for the Music Industry
Author: Lila Shroff
When I first wrote my paper, I was focused on how AI-generated music threatens artists' rights, and how copyright law should evolve in response. I had built my argument around historical comparisons, particularly how the advent of photography had upended the art world and displaced painters. But when I submitted my paper to GRACE, the editors thought my secondary argument was equally important, namely, that generative AI is fundamentally different—not just in terms of artistic impact, but in how it repurposes data without consent.
I further developed the work I did in PWR on legal scholars and technologists who highlight AI’s reliance on massive datasets, including copyrighted materials scraped without permission. They encouraged me to engage more deeply with the legal side of the debate and to examine artists’ perspectives rather than just theoretical copyright principles. Since they weren’t as familiar with some of my musician sources, I had to provide additional context, grounding my inter-stakeholder communication principle in artist-led demands rather than abstract legal theories. As I revised, I also incorporated insights from other coursework in policy and intellectual property law.
Stanford Students for Israeli Tech
Authors: Stanford Students for Israeli Tech
Our paper evolved from two different PWR1 and ESF papers and intense internal debate among the six of us who wrote the final version. But the hardest pushback came from the GRACE editors, who sent our paper back for at least four major revisions. Every time, they asked us to be more critical of our own stance. Our original paper strongly affirmed Israeli technological advancements and their potential to improve conditions for both Israelis and Palestinians. However, the editors insisted that we grapple more seriously with counterarguments and address critiques of Israeli AI-driven technology with greater nuance. Ultimately, the editors made our paper more precise and self-reflective. We’re not surprised that they tell us it’s one of the least popular papers on the website, but we appreciate that they still published it.
Breaking the Silence with Direct-Speech Brain-Computer Interfaces
Author: Alice Finkelstein
Even after winning the Winograd and Roberts Tech Ethics Prize, my paper underwent several revisions. My PWR2 class, Law and the Biosciences, greatly enriched my perspective on neurotechnology, allowing me to reflect on and build off of the topic of my PWR1 essay. I was able to apply this to some of the arguments I made in my paper about the feasibility of brain-computer interfaces and what future steps in their development might look like. Advice I would give to students looking to refine their coursework into a publication-ready paper would be to understand the audience that will be reading the paper and make sure to have a clear message or argument that flows well throughout the paper.
If you have a student whose work is a good fit for GRACE, please encourage them to revise their RBA and submit it! Submissions are due by June 30, 2025.
