TITLE: Can American Math. Monthly be used to publish hard research?
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: My question pertains to the journal "American Mathematical monthly" published by the MAA.
I wish to ask whether a paper as a part of a PhD thesis (subject: Combinatorics ) can be submitted to the AMM. Like, how does the community take publications in AMM to be? Most articles there are like extensions to Putnam/ IMO or such matter which can be called advanced undergraduate (according to my valuation). But, will a publication in AMM be valuable for PhD and post-doctoral work (like, will it be considered in the same vein as a publication in a specialized reputed journal), or will it be taken as a minor work? Thanks beforehand.

REPLY [12 votes]: Definitely they publish serious research. For example, this paper
MR0379852 L. Zalcman, A heuristic principle in complex function theory. Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), no. 8, 813–817
has 175 citations as recorded on Mathscinet. (And 351 on Google Scholar).
And many other such examples can be given. As I understand their criterion is
that the paper is a) of sufficient interest to the broad audience, and b) does not require much background. There are plenty of serious research papers satisfying both criteria.