Diversity and Scientific Progress in the Information Systems Discipline

The Information Systems (IS) discipline is over a third of a century old. It is a multidisciplinary field of study that covers areas related to the management, deployment, and use of information technology. In response to this extended reach and the growing needs and requirements of its stakeholders, the IS community successfully solidified its foundations through institutionalization and professionalization. However, in light of a complex patronage structure, undisciplined diversity, and unbounded eclecticism in scholarly activities, the progress of IS as a scientific discipline has been attenuated. Drawing lessons from the field of psychology, this paper calls for solidifying the disciplinary matrix of IS. It argues that scientific progress of IS can be advanced further through the development of cumulative and exemplary theories aimed at significant problems. Such a cumulative approach to research tradition and knowledge unification would help demarcate the boundaries of the IS domain not in terms of its subject matters, but by the theories it develops to solve the problems within its domain

Can Thomas Kuhn's paradigms help us understand software engineering

Peer reviewe

How was it for you? A cross-disciplinary study of ‘troublesome knowledge’ as identified by undergraduate students and lecturers in Geography, Medical Science and Psychology

We carried out a small scale pilot study to determine whether participants would spontaneously identify Threshold Concepts (TC’s) and/or troublesome knowledge during open questioning on the characteristics of their disciplines. Students and lecturers reflected upon both easy and difficult aspects of their studies or teaching practice in either group discussions or one-to-one interviews. We compared students and staff observations both within and between the disciplines we examined (Geography, Medical Sciences and Psychology undergraduate degrees). Our intention was to provide specific examples of TC’s within our three disciplines to inform further discussion of embedding the enhancement theme both in our practice and in the learning experiences of our students. Our working hypothesis was that if TC’s exerted an influence on the teaching and learning experience either negatively or otherwise, then we would find ample evidence supplied in our interviews. What we found was that overwhelmingly our interviewees focussed on generic skills-based aspects of teaching and learning. Only three potential content-specific TC’s were offered spontaneously by students and these were all from the discipline of geography

The metric tide: report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises

Towards an interoperable healthcare information infrastructure - working from the bottom up

Historically, the healthcare system has not made effective use of information technology. On the face of things, it would seem to provide a natural and richly varied domain in which to target benefit from IT solutions. But history shows that it is one of the most difficult domains in which to bring them to fruition. This paper provides an overview of the changing context and information requirements of healthcare that help to explain these characteristics.First and foremost, the disciplines and professions that healthcare encompasses have immense complexity and diversity to deal with, in structuring knowledge about what medicine and healthcare are, how they function, and what differentiates good practice and good performance. The need to maintain macro-economic stability of the health service, faced with this and many other uncertainties, means that management bottom lines predominate over choices and decisions that have to be made within everyday individual patient services. Individual practice and care, the bedrock of healthcare, is, for this and other reasons, more and more subject to professional and managerial control and regulation.One characteristic of organisations shown to be good at making effective use of IT is their capacity to devolve decisions within the organisation to where they can be best made, for the purpose of meeting their customers' needs. IT should, in this context, contribute as an enabler and not as an enforcer of good information services. The information infrastructure must work effectively, both top down and bottom up, to accommodate these countervailing pressures. This issue is explored in the context of infrastructure to support electronic health records.Because of the diverse and changing requirements of the huge healthcare sector, and the need to sustain health records over many decades, standardised systems must concentrate on doing the easier things well and as simply as possible, while accommodating immense diversity of requirements and practice. The manner in which the healthcare information infrastructure can be formulated and implemented to meet useful practical goals is explored, in the context of two case studies of research in CHIME at UCL and their user communities.Healthcare has severe problems both as a provider of information and as a purchaser of information systems. This has an impact on both its customer and its supplier relationships. Healthcare needs to become a better purchaser, more aware and realistic about what technology can and cannot do and where research is needed. Industry needs a greater awareness of the complexity of the healthcare domain, and the subtle ways in which information is part of the basic contract between healthcare professionals and patients, and the trust and understanding that must exist between them. It is an ideal domain for deeper collaboration between academic institutions and industry

The selection, appraisal and retention of digital scientific data: dighlights of an ERPANET/CODATA workshop

CODATA and ERPANET collaborated to convene an international archiving workshop on the selection, appraisal, and retention of digital scientific data, which was held on 15-17 December 2003 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Portugal. The workshop brought together more than 65 researchers, data and information managers, archivists, and librarians from 13 countries to discuss the issues involved in making critical decisions regarding the long-term preservation of the scientific record. One of the major aims for this workshop was to provide an international forum to exchange information about data archiving policies and practices across different scientific, institutional, and national contexts. Highlights from the workshop discussions are presented

Social representations: a revolutionary paradigm?

Against the prevailing view that progress in science is characterized by the progressive accumulation of knowledge, Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions of 1962 introduced the idea of revolutionary paradigm shifts. For Kuhn, everyday science is normal science in which scientists are engaged in problem solving activities set in the context of a widely accepted paradigm that constitutes a broad acceptance of a fundamental theoretical framework, an agreement on researchable phenomena and on the appropriate methodology. But, on occasions normal science throws up vexing issues and anomalous results. In response, some scientists carry on regardless, while others begin to lose confidence in the paradigm and look to other options, namely rival paradigms. As more and more scientists switch allegiance to the rival paradigm, the revolution gathers pace, supported by the indoctrination of students through lectures, academic papers and textbooks. In response to critics, including Lakatos who suggested that his depiction reduced scientific progress to mob psychology, Kuhn offered a set of criteria that contributed to the apparent ‘gestalt switch’ from the old to the new paradigm. But that is another story, as indeed is Kuhn’s claim that the social sciences are pre-paradigmatic – in other words, that the only consensus is that there is no consensus

Role and Discipline Relationships in a Transdisciplinary Biomedical Team: Structuration, Values Override and Context Scaffolding

Though accepted that "team science" is needed to tackle and conquer the health problems that are plaguing our society significant empirical evidence of team mechanisms and functional dynamics is still lacking in abundance. Through grounded methods the relationship between scientific disciplines and team roles was observed in a United States National Institutes of Health-funded (NIH) research consortium. Interviews and the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) were employed.. Findings show strong role and discipline idiosyncrasies that when viewed separately provide different insights into team functioning and change receptivity. When considered simultaneously, value-latent characteristics emerged showing self-perceived contributions to the team. This micro/meso analysis suggests that individual participation in team level interactions can inform the structuration of roles and disciplines in an attempt to tackle macro level problems.Comment: Presented at COINs13 Conference, Chile, 2013 (arxiv:1308.1028

Challenges of ultra large scale integration of biomedical computing systems

The NCRI Informatics Initiative is overseeing the implementation of an informatics framework for the UK cancer research community. The framework advocates an integrated multidisciplinary method of working between scientific and medical communities. Key to this process is community adoption of high quality acquisition, storage, sharing and integration of diverse data elements to improve knowledge of the causes, prevention and treatment of cancer. The integration of the complex data and meta-data used by these multiple communities is a significant challenge and there are technical, resource-based and sociological issues to be addressed. In this paper we review progress aimed at establishing the framework and outline key challenges in ultra large scale integration of biomedical computing systems