18,785 research outputs found

    Information Systems Research: Making an Impact in a Publish-or-Perish World

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    This paper reports on the panel discussion that took place at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in GuimarĂŁes, Portugal, on 9 June, 2017. The discussion focused on three central questions: 1) “What does research impact mean for you?”, 2) “What is your approach to making an impact with your research?”, and 3) “What advice would you give to PhD students and early-career scholars?”. While the five panelists (Samir Chatterjee, Alan R. Dennis, Shirley Gregor, Magnus MĂ€hring, and Peter Mertens) partly differed in their views on what impactful research is and how to conduct it, they seemed to largely agree that assessing impact requires a multidimensional view, that impactful IS research requires a clear link to real-world problems (“grand challenges”), and that young scholars need to avoid the trap of confusing research gaps with research relevance. With the panel discussion and this report, we hope to initiate a discussion on the essential topic of research impact in the IS discipline and to contribute to the development of a more uniform, yet more diverse, understanding and appreciation of different approaches to making an impact with IS research

    Forum : Welcome to the Machine: Thoughts on Writing for Scholarly Publication

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    The expression ‘publish or perish’ has probably never been as cruelly applicable as it is today. Universities in many countries now require their staff to publish in major, high-impact, peer-reviewed Anglophone journals as a pre-requisite for tenure, promotion and career advancement, making participation in this global web of scholarship an obligation for academics all over the world. Junior scholars therefore suddenly find themselves having to navigate the unfamiliar and dangerous waters of the international publication process. But while this all looks rather daunting, it serves important learning purposes for novice authors and with some planning and care, the process need not be as traumatic as it first seems. In this short forum piece I want to support the editors of this new journal in encouraging aspiring scholarly writers in their efforts to share their research as broadly as possible, thus bringing work that would otherwise remain local to the attention of international audiences

    Welcome to the machine: thoughts on writing for scholarly publication.

    Get PDF
    The expression ‘publish or perish’ has probably never been as cruelly applicable as it is today. Universities in many countries now require their staff to publish in major, high-impact, peer-reviewed Anglophone journals as a pre-requisite for tenure, promotion and career advancement, making participation in this global web of scholarship an obligation for academics all over the world. Junior scholars therefore suddenly find themselves having to navigate the unfamiliar and dangerous waters of the international publication process. But while this all looks rather daunting, it serves important learning purposes for novice authors and with some planning and care, the process need not be as traumatic as it first seems. In this short forum piece I want to support the editors of this new journal in encouraging aspiring scholarly writers in their efforts to share their research as broadly as possible, thus bringing work that would otherwise remain local to the attention of international audiences

    Intended and Unintended Consequences of a Publish-or-Perish Culture: A Worldwide Survey

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    Abstract: How does publication pressure in modern-day universities affect the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in science? By using a worldwide survey among demographers in developed and developing countries, we show that the large majority perceive the publication pressure as high, but more so in Anglo-Saxon countries and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. However, scholars see both the pros (upward mobility) and cons (excessive publication and uncitedness, neglect of policy issues, etc.) of the so-called “publish-or-perish” culture. By measuring behavior in terms of reading and publishing, and perceived extrinsic rewards and stated intrinsic rewards of practicing science, it turns out that publication pressure negatively affects the orientation of demographers towards policy and knowledge of the population facts. There are no signs that the pressure affects reading and publishing outside the core discipline.Incentives;productivity;science;publications;university

    Publish or Perish — Self-Archive to Flourish: The Green Route to Open Access

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    The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are actually doing it. If a country invests R billion Euros in its research, this translates into the loss of 50% x 85% = 42.5% or close to R/2 billion Euros’ worth of potential citation impact simply for failing to self-archive it all. It is as if someone bought R billion Euros worth of batteries and lost 42.5% of their potential usage simply for failing to refrigerate them all before use. Europe is losing almost 50% of the potential return on its research investment until research funders and institutions mandate that all research findings must be made freely accessible to all would-be users, webwide

    Software tools for conducting bibliometric analysis in science: An up-to-date review

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    Bibliometrics has become an essential tool for assessing and analyzing the output of scientists, cooperation between universities, the effect of state-owned science funding on national research and development performance and educational efficiency, among other applications. Therefore, professionals and scientists need a range of theoretical and practical tools to measure experimental data. This review aims to provide an up-to-date review of the various tools available for conducting bibliometric and scientometric analyses, including the sources of data acquisition, performance analysis and visualization tools. The included tools were divided into three categories: general bibliometric and performance analysis, science mapping analysis, and libraries; a description of all of them is provided. A comparative analysis of the database sources support, pre-processing capabilities, analysis and visualization options were also provided in order to facilitate its understanding. Although there are numerous bibliometric databases to obtain data for bibliometric and scientometric analysis, they have been developed for a different purpose. The number of exportable records is between 500 and 50,000 and the coverage of the different science fields is unequal in each database. Concerning the analyzed tools, Bibliometrix contains the more extensive set of techniques and suitable for practitioners through Biblioshiny. VOSviewer has a fantastic visualization and is capable of loading and exporting information from many sources. SciMAT is the tool with a powerful pre-processing and export capability. In views of the variability of features, the users need to decide the desired analysis output and chose the option that better fits into their aims

    Scrambling for higher metrics in the Journal Impact Factor bubble period: a real-world problem in science management and its implications

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    Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management
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