Venues for Publishing Student Affairs Technology Research

One of my colleagues recently made an offhand remark about the timeliness of an article in the current issue of The Journal of College Student Development.  Rather than focus on the comment or the specific article, however, it seems more productive to explore appropriate and timely venues for publishing similar work in a more timely manner.

The problem?  Much of the research that we conduct about technology must be shared and disseminated quickly to keep up with the rapid pace with which technologies and their uses change.  Many of the traditional venues for publication and dissemination of research have huge lag times, sometimes a few years long; this is particularly problematic for some technology-related research that grows out-of-date much quicker than many other bodies of information.  I have research that I have conducted that has grown out-of-date before I could get it published in peer-reviewed journals e.g., work conducted with my colleague Chris Medrano examining content in Wikipedia articles about U.S. colleges and universities.  I have had data – really good data about interesting stuff! – grow stale over the course of a very busy year-and-a-half such that I could not work with it (I could have worked with it and it was such cool stuff that I’m sure that it would have been published somewhere but I would have felt horrible and a little bit ashamed about it!).

Although I have moved out of student affairs, I continue to do work about student and faculty use of technology so this is still an issue that is important to me.  I’d like your help in thinking about how we get our work out there.  Here are some of my thoughts:

• Does the publication or release need to be through a traditional, peer-reviewed venue?  Even for those of us who believe ourselves to be locked into the traditional academic world where peer-reviewed publications remain the gold standard, I think the answer is “no.”  It might be acceptable to blog about your findings or present them in non-traditional conferences, especially if those venues allow you better reach your intended audience (e.g. how many full-time student affairs professionals regularly pore over peer-reviewed journals?).
• For those who do believe in the necessity or value of publishing or presenting in traditional venues, which ones allow us to disseminate our findings in a timely manner?  My initial reaction to the comment that began this entire line of questioning is that JCSD is a fine venue but it moves too slowly to publish much of the technology-related research I have conducted.  In fact, most of the peer-reviewed journals in higher education move too slowly for me to consider them viable venues for publication of timely technology-related research.

Maybe it would be helpful if we can compile a list of good venues for student affairs technology research.  (Although I’m mostly out of that field now, I still do some work in it and my experiences are significant enough that I think I can help.)  My suggestions, in no particular order:

• First Monday: Online, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on Internet studies.  They have published higher education-specific work in the past so they seem open to the topic.  It’s also a respected venue for scholarly work.  Very importantly, I understand that they review submitted articles very quickly.
• Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC): Peer-reviewed journal with an obvious focus.  Like First Monday, they have published work in our field.  It’s also the most respected venue that is usually on my radar screen for timely publication of relevant work.
• The Journal of Technology in Student Affairs: Another peer-reviewed journal with an obvious focus.  Although this is a viable venue, it’s probably not one that I would submit to as my first choice.  It’s a fine publication but it simply doesn’t have a strong, high-profile reputation.  That may sound very crass but the reality of scholarly publishing is that it’s important to publish in the most highly regarded journals possible.
• EDUCAUSE Review Online (ERO): Although ERO publishes some peer-reviewed work, it largely exists outside the traditional world of scholarly research because the publication is aimed at higher education IT practitioners.  With that said, it has historically been a very good venue for work that is intended for that audience although I haven’t published in it since they changed their format (EDUCAUSE used to have a monthly magazine and a quarterly peer-reviewed journal; they’ve been merged into one publication, ERO).

Outside of formal publications, several conferences are good venues to present and discuss this kind of work. I personally like EDUCAUSE events quite a bit but the audience that is interested in student affairs-specific work is pretty small.  The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), the arm of EDUCAUSE that focuses on teaching and learning, also puts on really nice conferences with wonderful participants if your work is more oriented towards teaching and learning.  I have also presented at other higher education conferences such as the annual conferences for ASHE, AERA, and AIR.  They are large conferences and quite frankly I don’t care for them very much because (a) they lack focus and (b) I have difficulty believing that anything that happens at them impacts the world beyond being another line on my CV.  AIR is a bit better, though, because it does have some focus and much of the work discussed there has real-world implications and impact largely because of the strong presence of institutional research professionals.

The student affairs conferences are certainly viable venues, particularly the recent ones that have begun cropping up that focus specifically on technology e.g., #NASPATech, #satechBOS.  I have drifted away from student affairs conference over the past several years, though, so I will let others with more recent experience offer their opinions and evaluations.

If you find this kind of brainstorming helpful or interesting, feel free to add your thoughts below.  If enough people are interested, this would make for a good shared project to throw into a publicly-accessible editing environment like a Google doc.