The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education has just released the inaugural issue of a peer-reviewed research journal focusing on issues related to college access and student retention.

The institute, the research arm of the nonprofit Council for Opportunity in Education, expects to publish Opportunity Matters: A Journal of Research Informing Educational Opportunity Practice & Programs once a year.

“While there has been a great deal of recent scholarly attention paid to the challenges faced by low-income and first-generation students, there is a paucity of research about which strategies can help disadvantaged students overcome the documented barriers they face,” Jennifer Engle, the editor of Opportunity Matters and the interim director of the Pell Institute, said this week in a written statement announcing the new publication.

“We want,” she said, “to provide a scholarly forum for discussion and dissemination of the latest relevant research and make that research more accessible and useful to opportunity educators.”

In an introductory note in the first issue, Ms. Engle, a senior research analyst at the Pell Institute, said the journal also would examine programs serving minority students and students with disabilities. A chief goal, she said, would be to encourage more researchers to vigorously study opportunity programs and their effects on students.

The first issue includes articles on learning communities, civic engagement, the preparation of students for graduate school, and efforts to improve the college-going rate in Britain. —Peter Schmidt