Guest editorial
| Published date | 17 July 2017 |
| Pages | 102-103 |
| Date | 17 July 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-05-2017-0014 |
| Author | Fiorella Foscarini,Donald C. Force |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance |
Guest editorial
Introduction to the themed issue “Fresh insights: student research in
records management”
As educators in the area of records management, Donald and I share the experience of
coming across student papers that make us think “… this submission is so innovative and so
well-argued that it deserves to be read by a wider public”. Offering students enrolled in
undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programs the opportunity to publish their
work – that is, original papers based on course assignments, projects, theses or other kinds
of research work carried out as part of their education – was the motivation for this themed
issue of the Records Management Journal, entitled “Fresh Insights: Student Research in
Records Management”. We received 41 extended abstracts by the deadline of May 1, 2016,
and 20 authors were subsequently invited to submit their full papers. The eight articles
included in this themed issue are the outcome of a lengthy, patient, sometime painful,
revision process. For most contributors, this was the rst time they experienced their work
being assessed through a double-blind peer-review process. This selection of articles
identies some of the research topics emerging scholars are engaged with today, and
provides some indications of the future directions of records management research and
scholarship.
In his article, entitled “Practice theory: A new approach for archival and recordkeeping
research”, Asen Ivanov, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of
Toronto (Canada), introduces a qualitative methodology based on practice theory for the
analysis of organizational activities. Ivanov refers to his on-going doctoral research project
on appraisal and preservation practices at a digital broadcasting archives to illustrate this
innovative methodology and to explain how it enriches the archival and records
management discipline.
Greg Rolan, a PhD candidate in the Monash University Centre for Organisational and
Community Informatics (Australia), examines the evolution of recordkeeping metadata and
suggests a new metadata model that would allow recordkeeping interoperability between
disparate ontologies. Rolan’s article, “Towards interoperable recordkeeping systems: A
meta-model for recordkeeping metadata”, introduces an infrastructural approach to
metadata modeling that builds on the Australian idea of recordkeeping informatics.
In “The challenges presented to records management by open government data in the
public sector in England: A case study”, Katherine Chorley discusses some of the ndings of
her research conducted at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust in the context of her
Master’s degree in the Department of Information Studies at the University College London
(UK). The goal of Chorley’s study was to identify areas of practice and policy that would need
to be developed further to ensure compliance with obligations of open government and open
data environments.
Rebecca Grant, a PhD candidate at the University College Dublin (Ireland), offers an
extensive overview of contemporary and historical attitudes toward research data and
suggests the role that recordkeeping professionals can play in the interdisciplinary area of
research data management and curation. Grant’s article “Recordkeeping and research data
management: A review of perspectives” is an insightful and up-to-date introduction of the
rapidly evolving world of research data.
With “Exploring digital preservation requirements: A case study from the National
Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC)”, Jaana Pinnick, a Master’s student in Information and
RMJ
27,2
102
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.27 No. 2, 2017
pp.102-103
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-05-2017-0014
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