How can I get some research going before my Ph.D. program?

You should not be too worried about getting your name connected to working papers before a Ph.D. program. If the opportunity presents itself, then take it, but don't lose any sleep over not having a working paper (or more) when you enter a Ph.D. program.

If you really want to get started on a research paper, find a professor who does research in the area in which you are interested. See if you can help the professor with a research project. To help means you do whatever he/she asks extremely well, without complaining, and without expecting to be a coauthor. Most of the time, this means you are collecting data. If you do a good job on one, or a series of projects, the professor may be inclined to coauthor with you on another project.

You should not expect a professor to be willing to put you as a coauthor on a paper just because you helped out. Being a coauthor requires a significant contribution of time, thought, and ability to a paper. Also remember, that before you have started a Ph.D. you have limited skills and ability to conduct rigorous academic research. Therefore, your main asset is to put a lot of time into the research process. Your one hour of work is not equivalent to one hour of a professors time and therefore you should not expect to be putting in a 1 to 1 ratio of time with the professor if you are going to be a coauthor. This all applied if you are just trying to ride of the coat-tails of a professors good ideas. The game changes a bit if you come up with the idea, and present it to a professor. In all stages of your education (at BYU and beyond), if you approach faculty with well thought out and looked into ideas, even if they are not successful in the end, it will let the faculty know you are intrinsically interested in research and they will be more inclined to let you help them with one of their ideas.

In reality, in a PhD program, it is likely that you will do the same work you would do as a coauthor at BYU as a non-coauthored research assistant. For this reason, it is unclear if people outside of BYU value publications with track members coauthored with BYU faculty started at BYU the same as other research, especially if the student does not have other subsequent successful projects not associated with BYU. Some may even suggest that BYU professor "hand out" co authorship. While this is, in most cases, not true, the only way to demonstrate that is to work on successful projects early on in your PhD program with non-BYU people, and be very ready to explain your BYU research.

Before you start your Ph.D. program you might consider trying to coauthor a simple piece of research. You may not want to target a top-tier journal with your first piece of research, but instead try to replicate an important study and shed a small bit of new insight into what the paper did or some small way the paper changed. Being exposed to the research process at any level (even if it is not a top tier article level) will benefit you significantly in your Ph.D. program.

There are, however, several things to consider when thinking about this all. First, if you target a lower tiered journal with lesser quality work, is it going to help you, or hurt you? No one seems to have a good answer to this question. In the end, the most likely answer is that if you are aiming to be admitted to the very top schools, then it may not help you (and there is some possibility it could hurt you). One could safely say that if the professors at the University where you are applying sometimes produce the level of research you are intending to produce, they could never fault you for it.

For example, if you started working on what you thought was an amazing project you thought up about how to make a new and improved ranking system for PhD programs in accounting, hoping to publish it in the Puerto Rican Journal of Educational Accountancy, Top School Number 1 might look down and say, "Wow, is that all this kid can produce? Is this the kind of research s/he wants to do forever?" in their snobby kind of way. However, Great School Number 22 might say "Wow, this student is really a go getter. He is engaging in research as an undergraduate, is learning the process, and while he might not be producing amazing stuff now, with that kind of background and with our training, he will be amazing." These two reactions are both possible, are most likely related to the "prestige" of the institution, and are, in the end, unknown. However, the current writer has heard esteemed faculty at a great school say, essentially, "You dont want your name associated with trashy papers, even if they get published in OK journals." Either way, it may be unwise to make your research "experience" the center piece of your application letter to school.

If you are intrinsically interested in the research process, and dont want to have to worry about any of the considerations above, you have several choices. First, just do amazing research at BYU. There have been track members who have done this--been a part of articles which hit top journals, which were followed up by other hits unrelated to BYU. Second, submit your lesser articles to non-accounting journals, like a general business journal. Third, dont submit your articles anywhere, and just use them as the basis of a great Econ 388 or 588 project.