The most prestigious American peer reviewed journal you could publish in
that covers records management is JASIST (Journal for the American Society
for Information Science and Technology), edited by Indiana University's own
Blaise Cronin. The most prestigious British journal is the Journal of
Documentation. You can also score some academic points by publishing in any
of the various IEEE Transactions journals--though fewer. As an
archivist/records manager, there are no academic brownie points lost by
publishing in the American Archivist or any of the other archival journals.
Many of my colleagues in other prestigious university programs publish
regularly in the American Archivist. Indeed, no less an eminence than Helen
Tibbo of UNC is the current president of the SAA.

One of the purposes of an academic faculty is to direct students to
appropriate venues for publication to further their careers. When I was
getting my doctorate at the University of Chicago in the 1980s it was
unheard of for a graduate student to publish even an article. We were the
grunts who ran the academic journals. I married my husband in part because
he had not only published articles as a graduate student, he had published a
book--his bachelor's thesis that my doctoral advisor adopted for his
classes. 

The best advice you can get is to work with your faculty. Have them review
the article and let you know what you need to do to make it rigorously
academic. The IMJ and the RMQ were always professional journals--nothing
wrong with that, but no one ever got academic brownie points from publishing
in them. The two worlds in records management, academic and professional,
have always been divorced because it was hard-core archivists teaching
academic records management classes to students studying hard-core archives.
Professionals with PhDs that could teach could also make a lot more money as
consultants. There is only one exception, and that is Michael Pemberton, who
did more for records management as an academic field than anyone ever
has--or will. 

Work with your faculty! That is why you are paying the big bucks to get a
real, live masters degree. Ask yourself, however, what publishing in an
academic journal will do for your future. Records managers and their
employers do not read academic journals, the audiences are exclusive. If you
want to go on to get a PhD and get tenure, that is a reason to publish in an
academic journal.

Best wishes,
Carol

Carol E.B. Choksy, Ph.D., CRM, PMP

CEO

IRAD Strategic Consulting, Inc.
(317) 294-8329

Adjunct Lecturer
School of Library and Information Science
Indiana University, Bloomington

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