Author Responsibilities in Improving the Quality of Peer Reviews: A Rejoinder to Iivari (2016)

In this rejoinder to Iivari (2016), I discuss authors’ responsibilities in the process of ensuring quality reviews. I argue that one overlooked element in quality peer reviewing is authors’ unconstrained right to submit manuscripts in whatever form or quality they desire. As such, I suggest adding some constraints and offering more freedom to reviewers to maintain viability of the scholarly publication system. I offer three responses to Iivari’s suggestions and add two further suggestions for change

Network Analysis for Predicting Academic Impact

How are scholars ranked for promotion, tenure and honors? How can we improve the quantitative tools available for decision makers when making such decisions? Current academic decisions are mostly very subjective. In the era of “Big Data,” a solid quantitative set of measurements should be used to support this decision process. This paper presents a method for predicting the probability of a paper being in the most cited papers using only data available at the time of publication. We find that structural network properties are associated with increased odds of being in the top percentile of citation count. The paper also presents a method for predicting the future impact of researchers, using information available early in their careers. This model integrates information about changes in a young researcher’s role in the citation network and co-authorship network and demonstrates how this improves predictions of their future impact

The Role of Espoused National Cultural Values in Cross-National Cultural IS Studies

Hofstede’s work on national culture has been extensively used in cross-national studies in the information systems discipline. In particular, many cross-national cultural researchers have used Hofstede’s cultural index. This study argues that espoused national cultural values should be measured when the unit of analysis of the cross-national cultural study is the individual. This study reviews cross-national studies published in eight IS journals and examines both cross-national studies and cross-national cultural studies. After that, this work provides rationales of why espoused national cultural values should be measured. Finally, we conclude that espoused national culture is more appropriate for individual behavior research

Assessing Junior Faculty Research Productivity in the IS Field: Recommendations for Promotion and Tenure Standards for Asian Schools

We gathered information about junior faculty research productivity in the information systems (IS) field in North America and in a set of top Asian schools. Our work complements prior studies on IS faculty research productivity in several ways. First, we focused on junior faculty research productivity, which refers to publication records of current tenure-track assistant professors. To provide statistics with a greater coverage of IS researchers, we also collected information about the pre-tenure publication records of associate professors. Second, we covered IS researchers who obtained their doctoral degrees in or after the year 2000 and counted their publications until 2013 to provide the most up-to-date information about junior faculty research productivity. Third, we collected information about IS researchers’ publications in leading IS journals (based on the AIS Senior Scholar basket of journals) and in elite broader business journals (based on the Financial Times list and UT Dallas list). Finally, examining junior faculty research productivity in the IS field in Asian schools and in North America enabled us to provide recommendations for promotion and tenure standards for Asian schools in light of the research productivity and tenure standards in North America

Does “Evaluating Journal Quality and the Association for Information Systems Senior Scholars Journal Basket…” Support the Basket with Bibliometric Measures?

We re-examine “Evaluating Journal Quality and the Association for Information Systems Senior Scholars Journal Basket…” by Lowry et al. (2013). They sought to use bibliometric methods to validate the Basket as the eight top quality journals that are “strictly speaking, IS journals” (Lowry et al., 2013, pp. 995, 997). They examined 21 journals out of 140 journals considered as possible IS journals. We also expand the sample to 73 of the 140 journals. Our sample includes a wider range of approaches to IS, although all were suggested by IS scholars in a survey by Lowry and colleagues. We also use the same sample of 21 journals in Lowry et al. with the same methods of analysis so far as possible. With the narrow sample, we replicate Lowry et al. as closely as we can, whereas with the broader sample we employ a conceptual replication. This latter replication also employs alternative methods. For example, we consider citations (a quality measure) and centrality (a relevance measure in this context) as distinct, rather than merging them as in Lowry et al. High centrality scores from the sample of 73 journals do not necessarily indicate close connections with IS. Therefore, we determine which journals are of high quality and closely connected with the Basket and with their sample. These results support the broad purpose of Lowry et al., finding a wider set of high quality and relevant journals than just MISQ and ISR, and find a wider set of relevant, top quality journals

Publication Trade-Offs for Junior Scholars in IS: Conjoint Analysis of Preferences for Quality, First Authorship, Collaboration, and Time

A publication record provides evidence of research productivity and is critical for junior scholars starting their careers in academia. Publication attributes, such as level of the publication outlet, order and number of authors, are typically used to evaluate its quality. However, time spent on a publication is a limited commodity, and researchers face significant trade-offs when deciding which publications they should concentrate on. To better understand the choices made, conjoint analysis with 241 junior IS scholars was conducted. We find that when “quality vs. number of authors” and “quality vs. time” trade-offs are considered, quality is prioritized. However, the emphasis on quality is less pronounced when “rank as an author” is at stake. Especially Ph.D. students tend to choose first authorship when dealing with “quality vs. rank as an author” trade-off. Our findings provide intriguing insights into how publication attributes weigh against each other when research collaboration decisions are made

The Development of Social Capital in the Collaboration Network of Information Systems Scholars

This study examines the development of social capital in the collaboration network of information systems (IS) scholars over a 33-year period (from 1980 to 2012). Using the co-authorship data from six premier journals (MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of MIS, Journal of the AIS, European Journal of Information Systems, and Information Systems Journal), we analyze the historical trajectory of five aspects of the field\u27s structural social capital: network ties, network configuration, structural holes, growth, and structural cohesion. Our results show that, as a scientific field, the IS community has made significant progress in accumulating social capital. The current IS collaboration network is also comparable in several aspects with networks found in other business disciplines (e.g., management, finance, and marketing). Our study has several important implications for the focus-versus-diversity debate in the IS field. Based on our findings, we offer some recommendations as to how the IS community can increase the field\u27s social capital, and thereby facilitate knowledge creation and innovation

Contributors to the High-impact IS Journals (1977-2014): An Aid for Setting Research Standards

Interest in the rankings of contributors to academic literature is evidenced by the numerous publications across most business and economic disciplines. This study presents the most prolific authors 1) over the entire history of the 11 high-impact IS journals and 2) over the ten most recent years for each of the journals. We include the number of authors who have published in the journals but who may not be considered prolific based on our classification; this data is important and especially critical for IS departments that set research standards. Identifying and ranking authors in the IS discipline is interesting for several reasons. While some may be curious to see how they perform compared to these researchers, a more beneficial application of the findings in this paper pertains to establishing realistic promotion and tenure standards. Although 11,204 authors published in the 11 high-impact journals, 7,734 (69%) of those authors published only once in these journals in the 1977-2014 period. This fact is essential for any IS department that sets promotion and tenure guidelines. Using our findings will help colleges and IS departments establish reasonable and attainable promotion and tenure standards based on the actual performance of others in the discipline

Invited viewpoint: how well does the Information Systems discipline fare in the Financial Times’ top 50 Journal list?

This paper investigates the performance of the Information Systems (IS) discipline as reflected in the scholarly impact of the three IS journals that are included in the Financial Times’ top 50 journals (FT50), the four IS journals in the top tiers of the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ Academic Journal Guide (CABS AJG), and the eight journals that comprise the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Senior Scholars' Basket of Journals (AIS Basket). Journal lists, when framed as a form of ‘strategic signaling’, are used to by institutions to communicate values and priorities to scholars. Through strategic signaling, journal lists are performative and have the potential to shape and constrain research activity. Given the strategic and performative role of journal lists, it is important that the journals that constitute those lists have substantial impact. To measure the scholarly impact of journals we propose a new measure, the HMJ index, which comprises an equally-weighted combination of journal H-index, median citations per article, and Journal Impact Factor (JIF). Using the HMJ index, the results show that all eight AIS Basket journals are performing at a level that is commensurate with the other journals that make up the FT50. The results further show substantial differences between the FT50 journals, such as the number of articles published per annum. Implications for IS scholars, IS groups, and the IS discipline are identified, together with recommendations for action