Records Management Journal – Call for themed papers

The carrot and the stick: the impact of legislation, regulation and inquiries on records management best practice, change and innovation

RMJ Co-Editors: Elizabeth Lomas (University College London) and Sarah R. Demb (Harvard University)

Call for abstracts
The delivery of our recordkeeping systems is inextricably linked with societal expectations as enshrined in law. Legislation and regulations influences every aspect of the design and delivery of our systems from record creation, retention and deletion requirements, through to stakeholder rights, transparency and accountability through time. Laws also impact the role of professional records managers (including job descriptions, demands on time, resourcing and salaries, status within organizational structures etc) with some records managers becoming in effect paralegal professionals. Legislation is often seen as the stick
that motivates records management delivery but rather, should perhaps be promoted as the carrot seeking to ensure records management enables and delivers a better, fairer society. In addition, legislation drives forwards and shapes innovation and change, dictating the parameters of research, technological advancement and delivery in practice.

At these new frontiers in the ‘information age’, records managers and other professionals are increasingly taken a lead in the evolution of legislative frameworks. Navigating legal structures is by its nature dynamic; laws can change at pace, at sector, national, and
international levels. In addition it is a complex space. When implementing legal requirements in the real world, there is a need to balance competing considerations and be mindful of shifting contexts. For example, individual human rights can conflict with societal and organizational rights so there is a weighing of differing considerations required. Furthermore, as technology and data are shared and managed across global boundaries, international law needs to be traversed.

We are keen to promote discussions, best practice case examples and areas for improvement in this arena, surfacing both the macro and the micro using person-centred and/or technological lenses. Submissions are invited from practitioners, researchers and educators. They can be in the form of opinion pieces/viewpoints, critical reviews, research, case studies or conceptual/philosophical papers. In order to draw in short and long case examples from across research and practice, submission lengths can be from between 3000-8000 words.

Examples might include (but are not limited to):

• The impact of the 1948 Charter on Human Rights on recordkeeping thinking;
• The role and influence of regulators on recordkeeping systems at local, national and/or
  international levels;
• The development of legal recognition of oral traditions in recordkeeping systems;
• Case studies on the implementation or legal requirements in practice, e.g. the use of data
  protection privacy impact assessments to improve records managers system delivery and
  protection of personal data;
• The parameters needed for AI law, e.g. the requirements for pipeline development
  documentation;
• Discussions of the impact of example inquiries on recordkeeping including on the space for human
  testimony;
• The space for legislation for citizen participation in record creation and keeping;
• The place of recordkeeping professionals in legal delivery;
• The impact of equality laws on systems design;
• The role of AI in legal cases;
• The challenge of ensuring the authenticity of evidence in a deep fake world.

Submission deadlines

• Extended abstracts (more info below): Monday 31st July
• Abstracts accepted and authors notified no later than: Mid-August 2023
• Full paper submitted: 1 October 2023
• Review, revision and final acceptance: 1 December 2023

The Records Management Journal applies article-level publication, so within approximately a month of acceptance the article will be available online.

Submission Process
Extended abstracts should be a 500 word version of the Records Management Journal’s structured abstract, using the headings described in the author guidelines at:
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=rmj. They should be emailed to Elizabeth Lomas at e.lomas@ucl.ac.uk by midnight on the 31st July 2023. Please use the subject line ‘RMJ Legislation Themed Call’ in your email. For the final version, please note that shorter opinion pieces and practitioner case studies (3,000 words) may also be submitted for this themed issue. Your abstract submission should indicate the intended length of your piece.

Under the design/methodology/approach heading, please include the following as appropriate to the type of paper:

• What is the approach to the topic if it is a theoretical or conceptual paper? Briefly outline existing
  knowledge and the value added by the paper compared to that.
• What is the main research question and/or aim if it a research paper? What is the research strategy
  and the main method(s) used?
• If the paper is a case study outline, include its scope and nature, and the method of deriving
  conclusions.
• If the paper is an opinion piece, outline its focus and key highlight points.

Please send your extended abstract to: e.lomas@ucl.ac.uk

Full papers (for accepted abstracts) should be 3000-8000 words (excluding references) and prepared using the RMJ guidelines which can be found at:
http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=rmj. Papers will be reviewed following the journal’s standard double-blind peer review process.

The editor(s) are also happy to receive informal enquiries before submissions of abstracts.

RMJ Editor: Sarah R. Demb, Harvard University Archives
With Guest Co-editor: Eira Tansey, University of Cincinnati Libraries

The Records Management Journal (RMJ) invites submissions for a themed issue focused on the pathways and challenges of climate change. We welcome contributions about, but not limited to, the following themes:

• climate change and its (potential) impact on records management policy, principles and main dimensions
• records management actors, components and advanced tools in relation to climate change
• risk management approaches, standards, methods and tools to address records management’s contribution to and mitigation of climate change
• records and information assets value and valorization (records economics/infonomics)
• records management’s increasing reliance on fragile infrastructures
• legal liability, rights, ownership and ethics in the Anthropocene
• professional responsibilities, roles and skills in the Anthropocene
• rapid technological change/challenges in the Anthropocene, including dealing with consequences of related events or practices such as pandemics and fossil-fuel use
• challenging aspects of climate and climate change outcomes on long-term (rather than permanent) preservation, including on emulation and migration models
• climate change resilience maturity models and records: relevant initiatives and case studies.

We are interested in different disciplinary perspectives from researchers, academics and practitioners. Submissions can be viewpoints, critical reviews, research, case studies or conceptual/philosophical papers.

New Submission Deadlines

• Extended abstracts July 23, 2020

Provisional

• Abstracts accepted and authors notified no later than:  August 31, 2020
• Full paper submitted: October 23, 2020
• Review, revision and final acceptance: March 26, 2021

The RMJ applies article-level publication, so within approximately a month of final acceptance the article will be available online.

Submission Process

Extended abstracts should be a 500-word version of the Records Management Journal’s structured abstract, using the headings described in the author guidelines at: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/….

Please note that shorter opinion pieces and practitioner case studies (3,000 words) may also be submitted for this themed issue. Your abstract submission should indicate the intended length of your piece.

Under the design/methodology/approach heading, please include the following as appropriate to the type of paper:

• What is the approach to the topic if it is a theoretical or conceptual paper? Briefly outline existing knowledge and the value added by the paper compared to that.
• What is the main research question and/or aim if it is a research paper? What is the research strategy and the main method(s) used?
• If the paper is a case study outline, include its scope and nature, and the method of deriving conclusions.
• If the paper is an opinion piece, outline its focus and key highlight points.

Please send your extended abstract to: sarah_demb@harvard.edu. The editors are also happy to receive informal enquiries before submissions of abstracts.

• Full papers for accepted abstracts should be 3000-8000 words (excluding references) and prepared using the RMJ guidelines, which can be found at:  emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/….

• Papers will be reviewed using the Journal’s standard double-blind peer review process.