A Ranking List for Information Systems Journals

Abstract

There has been an increasing focus internationally on the quality and impact of research outputs in recent years. Several countries, including the United Kingdom and New Zealand have implemented schemes to base the funding of research on research quality. The Australian government is planning to implement a Research Quality Framework (RQF) in the next few years that will impact greatly on funding of research in Australian universities. A key issue for Australian researchers is how the quality and impact of research is defined and measured in their discipline areas. Although peer review is widely used to assess the quality of research outputs, it is expensive and labour intensive. Other surrogate quality measures are often used. This paper focuses on measuring the quality of research outputs in the information systems discipline. We argue that measures such as citation indexes are inappropriate for information systems and that the publication outlet is a more suitable indicator of quality. We present a ranking list of journals for the information systems discipline, and discuss the approach we have taken in developing the list. We discuss how the ranking list may be used in defining and measuring the quality of information systems research outputs, the limitations inherent in the approach and discuss lessons we have learned in developing the list.

A method for identifying journals in a discipline: An application to information systems

“…Fisher et al [11] published three sets of journals (level A, level B, and premium professional) based on other published rankings and a follow-up discussion among IS scholars. Preliminary analysis of the ''level A'' journals reveals strong agreement with the pure IS journals identified in this study.…”

What are Research Expectations? A Comparative Study of Different Academic Disciplines

“…Consequently, many articles have been written in a wide range of fields to help researchers better understand and evaluate their own field (Bontis & Serenko, 2009;Dubois & Reeb, 2000;Fisher, Shanks, & Lamp, 2007;Guidry et al, 2004;Linton & Thongpapanl, 2004;Thongpapanl, 2012). However, understanding the boundaries of a field and the relative quality of different outlets in the field is critical to decisions regarding tenure and promotion.…”

The development of an AI journal ranking based on the revealed preference approach

“…Third, Thomson indexes only a small part of all refereed journals. For example, it contains only 36% of all Information Systems outlets (Fisher, Shanks, & Lamp, 2007). Out of 202 AI journals identified in the present study, only 61% were indexed by Thomson.…”

“…Therefore, an AI-focused journal would obtain fewer citations and lower ranking than general computer science journals; however this position would not necessarily reflect its actual contribution. For example, when AI journals are included in the lists of information systems journals, they are rarely ranked highly (Fisher et al, 2007). Therefore, this project focuses on AI-specific academic journals only to avoid results confounding and to establish a valid ranking list.…”