Diversity or Identity Crisis? An Examination of Leading IS Journals

Abstract

Since its founding in the 1960s, the Information Systems (IS) field has been involved in critical debates about the nature and future of the discipline. Many researchers feel that diversity in IS research is our strength; others fear that too much diversity leads to losing the field's core identity. Do the scholarly contributions of the IS community reveal either of these two phenomena? In order to address this question, we examine articles published in leading IS journals (MISQ, ISR, and JMIS) during the period of 2000 to 2006. Our analysis includes classifying the articles using a classification scheme that includes the consideration of IT artifact, the research methods used, and the research topics covered. We provide descriptive statistics following a content analysis procedure and results based on cluster analysis and association rule mining. Our results provide an update on previous findings on IT artifact and its consideration in IS publications. Our results further suggest that while our leading journals cover a broad range of research topics and methods, there is also evidence of popularity on some topics and research methods.

Assessing Researcher Publication Productivity in the Leading Information Systems Journals: A 2003-2007 Update

“…This is a challenging question that continues to drive scientometric research. Several efforts toward measuring research and journal quality have been explored including surveys of IS departments, reviews of university journal lists, analyses of journal ranking studies, citation counts, investigations of diversity of topics and methodologies, and the creation of quantitative formulas to evaluate journal quality [Athey and Plotnicki 2005;Ayanso et al 2007;Barnes 2005;Chua et al 2002;Clarke 2008;Dennis et al 2006;Ferratt et al 2007;Huang and Hsu 2005;Neufeld et al 2006;Peffers and Tang 2003;Rainer and Miller 2005;Templeton et al 2007]. Our method for journal selection was based on the rankings of IS journals in previous studies along with the Association for Information Systems Senior Scholars' journal ranking.…”

JMS at 50: Trends over Time

“…To analyse these articles we used a directed content analysis approach (see Hsieh and Shannon, ). As a first step in identifying the categories for the content analysis, we initially searched for similar content analytic studies in a range of journals with a similar publication strategy/approach to JMS , such as Academy of Management Journal , Journal of International Business Studies , Journal of Management , and Strategic Management Journal (e.g., Aronoff, ; Ayanso et al., ; Cascio and Aguinis, ; Clark et al., ; Craighead and Meredith, ; Giunipero et al., ; Lockett, ). Although these authors conducted content analytic studies from different perspectives, we sought to draw relevant categories from these previous studies as well as developing inductively our own categories when identifying the content of an article.…”

Assessing Researcher Publication Productivity in the Leading Information Systems Journals: A 2005–2009 Update

“…Past research has included several efforts toward identifying research and journal quality, including reputational surveys of IS departments, reviews of university journal lists, analyses of journal ranking studies, citation analyses, investigations of diversity of topics and methodologies, and the creation of quantitative formulas to evaluate journal quality [Adams and Johnson, 2008;Athey and Plotnicki, 2005;Barnes, 2005;Neufeld, Fang, and Huff, 2006;Baskerville, 2008;Chua et al 2002;Clarke, 2008;Dennis et al, 2006;Ferratt et al 2007;Huang and Hsu, 2005;Ayanso, Lertwachara, and Vachon, 2007;Mingers and Harzing, 2007;Peffers and Tang, 2003;Rainer and Miller, 2005;Templeton, Lewis, and Luo, 2007]. In this research, we focus on the leading IS researchers, their university affiliations, and the universities that supply them.…”