Key Aspects of the History of the Information Systems Discipline in Australia

The Information Systems discipline is 40 years old, in Australia, as in Scandinavia, the U.S.A., the U.K. and Germany. This paper presents what may be the first formally published attempt at a history of the discipline in this country. It identifies the precursors to the discipline, and its emergence in colleges and universities. It identifies institutions and individuals who were present at the birth, and traces key steps in organisational and political history. More controversially, it provides interpretations of the nature of the discipline and its key intellectual themes, and identifies threats to its survival

A citation analysis of Australian information systems researchers: Towards a new era

Citation analysis is a potentially valuable means of assessing the contributions of researchers, in Information Systems (IS) as in other disciplines. In particular, a combination of raw counts and deeper analysis of citation data can deliver insights into the impact of a researcher's publications on other researchers. Despite this potential, the limited literature in the IS discipline has paid very little attention to the use of citation analysis for this purpose. Meanwhile, the federal department responsible for education funding has convinced successive federal governments to develop research quality measures that can be used as a basis for differential funding. The Howard Government's proposed Research Quality Framework (RQF) has been abandoned, but a number of aspects of it survive within the Rudd Government's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The ERA also appears likely to involve a highly formalised process whereby 'research groupings ' within individual universities will be evaluated, with (as yet unclear) impacts on the distribution of research funding. Funding agencies have an interest in score-keeping, whether or no