[AISWorld] IS Research Rankings Site Updated

[Manuel Mora T.]

Dear colleague Shailendra Palvia and IT colleagues:

I consider that an email as I posted yesterday deserves additional
explanations. Let me to comment briefly such concerns:

#1 Other computing disciplines deserve a high respect for pioneers and
people who have done core contributions (rather than on the number or
published papers).

#2 Other computing disciplines do not spent time in counting #papers
of authors. How can be the reaction of Computer Sciences or
Artificial Intelligence research communities whether authors rather topics
are ranked or investigated? Is it useful for advancing the planning,
design, building,  operation, evaluation, and retirement of  IT systems?
In these related disciplines, the seniority level is gained by
contributions (1, 2 or 3 maybe) but not for # of papers in controlled
journals.

#3 Management Science, Communications of the ACM, or Harvard Business
Review have impact factors over 2.0 - 3.0, which is normal, so an impact
factor over 5.0 suggests a bias in the community to cite papers from it.
Also, it is absurd or few known that an author were published on 15
papers in Management Science (it is not ease by the rigor of real asked
contributions but in MIS Quarterly it happens at present decade!)


#4 I see positive to conduct a study on contributions of such journals
during two epochs /the initial where IT was the focus and the type of
papers were both relevant and with rigor vs the present where a myriad of
microscopic topics are pursued and overdone for the sake of the authors
-other metrics can be used like citations, knowledge transferred to
textbooks, practical acceptation by IT industry, and maybe the
acknowledgement of IT community over top researchers/ On it, I reported
some names of people that are not in the list but that they have really
contributed (with less papers but more value) to IT discipline. Of course,
there are more, and of course, some of the suggested list are also part of
this real select group that all of us respect by their core contributions
(not for the # of papers).

#5 In IT disciplines, the core underlying purpose should be something like
"to advance our knowledge on how to plan, design, build, operate, and
retire efficient, efficacy, effective, ethic and worth-trusty  IT systems"
On it, how many top IT researchers really have developed IT systems,
installed IT networking systems, evaluated IT real projects, negotiated
and discussed with IT suppliers, and have a BS or MSc on IT, SwE or
Computer Sciences? Of course there are excellent exceptions but it seems
it is not the common attribute at present (e.g. their backgrounds are from
Psychology, Business, Management, Liberal Arts, etc). It suggests a
different vision on what are IT systems.


Finally, how many topics taught in BS and MSc IT programs at present were
generated by our community ( OOA&D? not, Networking Design?, IT Project
Management ? not, Cloud Computing? not,  IT Services Management? – from IT
and related industry, Green IT? – not,  Java, PHP, etc languages? Not.
These are my arguments on a bureaucratic IT discipline at present.

In summary, I respect totally to the list of Top Senior Researchers
listed in such reports, but my core inquiry is if it is a useful
metric for advancing our IT discipline at present? and if we are
free thinkers while we support the notion of that only 6-10 journals are
important in IT research (it based on fact that the rankings show a clear
separation between such journals and the remainder available 40-60) !

My total respect for the suggested list, but I value more the IT people
(perhaps with 5-7 papers in top journals but with real contributions
to our IT discipline). Also, the classificatio on A+ vs the remainder
journals could be reduced to the usual quartiles (25 worldwide premier
journals) + 25 high quality wih worldwide scope + 25 high quality for
regional purposes + last 25 for fast publishing (variable quality)).
Thanks,
Manuel Mora






Alan Litchfield wrote:



Shailendra Palvia wrote:
> Dear Manuel and all concerned MIS colleagues:
>
> Dear colleague Shailendra Palvia and IT colleagues:
I consider that an email as I posted yesterday deserves additional
explanations. Let me to comment briefly such concerns:

#1 Other computing disciplines deserve a high respect for pionners and
people who has done core contributions (rather than they are published
or highly published in top journals).

#2 Other computing disciplines do not spent time in counting #papers
of authors. How can be the reaction of Computer Sciences or
Artificial Intelligence communities if authors rather topics are ranked?
Is it useful for advancing the design, building and operation of computer
systems? In these related disciplines, the seniority level is gained
by contributions (1, 2 or 3 maybe) but not for # of papers in controlled
journals.

#3 Management Science, Communications of the ACM, or Harvard Business
Review have impact factors over 2.0 - 3.0, which is normal, so an impact
factor over 5.0 suggests a bias in the community to cite papers from it.
Also, it is absurd or few known that an author were published on 15
papers in Management Science (it is not ease by the rigor of asked
contributions but in MIS Quarterly it happens at present decade!)


#4 I see positive to conduct a study on contributions of such journals
during two epochs /the initial where IT was the focus and the type of
papers were both relevant and with rigor vs the present where a myriad of
microscopic topics are pursued and overdone for the sake of the authors
-other metrics can be used like citations, knowledge transfered to
textbooks, practical acceptation by IT industry, and maybe the
acknowledgement of IT community over top researchers/
On it, I reported some names of people that are not in the list
but that they have really contributed (with less papers but more value)
to IT discipline. Of course, there are more, and of course, some
of the suggested list are also part of this real select group that
all of us respect by their core contributions (not for the # of
papers).

#5 In IT disciplines, the core underlying purpose should be something
like "to advance our knowledge on how to plan, design, build, operate, and
retire efficient, efficacy, effective, ethic and worthstrusty  IT systems"
On it, how many top IT researchers really have developed IT systems,
installed IT networking systems, evaluated IT real projects, negotiated
and discussed with IT suppliers, and have a BS or MSc on IT, SwE or
Computer Sciences? Of course there are excellent exceptions but it seems
it is not the common attribute at present (e.g. their backgrounds are from
Psychology, Business, Management, Liberal Arts, etc). It suggests a
different vision on what are IT systems.


Finally, how many topics taught in BS and MSc IT programs at present were
generated by our community? These are my arguments on a burecreatic IT
discipline at present.


In summary, I respect totally to the list of Top Senior Researchers
listed in such reports, but my core inquiry is if it is a useful
metric for advancing our IT discipline at present? and if we are
free thinkers support the notion of that only 6-10 journals are
important in IT research (it when the rankings shows a clear separation
between such journals and the remainder available 40-60) !

Manuel Mora

> You have articulated some very good ideas for stimulating more thinking
> on part of all MIS researchers regarding contributions of the MIS
> researchers to the world of academia and practitioners. For reasons cited
> by you, some top notch articles in journals other than MISQ, JMIS, ISR
> are not cited enough to make an impact.
>
> Ph.D. students and all researchers must be guided by journal editors to
> refer to all relevant articles on a theme.  One example should illustrate
> this point.  One Ph.D. researcher did a thesis focusing on IT Enabled
> Global Sourcing of Services.  His/her citations focused mostly on the top
> three journals totally ignoring some very high quality publications in
> journals like JITCAR, I & M, Decision Sciences,  JGITM and so on.
>
> Sincerely
>
>
>
> Dr. Shailendra Palvia
> Professor of MIS, College of Management
> C.W. Post Campus, Long Island University, Brookville, NY 11801.
> http://liu.edu/CWPost/Academics/Faculty/P/Shailendra-Palvia.aspx?rn=Facult
> y&ru=/CWPost/Academics/Faculty.aspx Founding Editor, Journal of IT Case
> and Applications Research (JITCAR), www.jitacr.org World Conference
> Chairperson, Tenth Annual Int'l Smart Sourcing Conference
> Solbridge University, South Korea, June 21-22, 2012.
> www.outsourceglobal.org Phone #: 732-983-7034
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org
> [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Manuel Mora T.
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 3:24 PM
> To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
> Subject: Re: [AISWorld] IS Research Rankings Site Updated
>
>
> Dear colleagues in IT discipline:
> In other IT related disciplines (Computer Sciences, Artificial
> Intelligence, Software Engineering, and actually Management Science /
> OR), the most recognized academics are those that have introduced a core
> innovation (construct, theory, model, or system) which is usually used
> during a long time (1 or several decades). Examples: Lofti Zadeh (fuzzy
> logic mechanisms), E-R Model (Peter Chen),  Core Competences (Gary Hamel
> and CK Prahalad), Soft Systems (Peter Checkland), MIS concept (Gordon
> Davis), IT Development Stages (Michael Gibson and Richard Nolan), EIS and
> CSFs (John  Rockart), GDSS (Paul Gray, George Huber), 5-force model
> (Michael Porter), BSC (David Norton and Robert Kaplan), Ethernet protocol
> (Robert Metcalfe), among dozens of contributions. It is very likely that
> they published few papers in top journals but they contributions have
> shaped such disciplines (of course, your papers are largely cited). On
> it, the research rankings, do really reveal the critical contributions to
> advance our IT discipline or have we fostered an academic bureaucratic
> context? People in other disciplines are surprised that MIS Quarterly has
> an impact factor over 5.0 points, which is not natural in other
> disciplines. MIS Quarterly can be #1 but in all surveys the people
> usually ranks it by default! Are we really free academics or we have to
> follow the modern research IT rules (not from the 70-80s according to my
> estimation of type of research papers published in similar 6 journals).
> In summary, how many core contributions published in the 6 suggested
> journals have shaped in the last 10 years the IT discipline with critical
> research discoveries or inventions? Interesting topics like
> virtualization, green IT, ITSM, etc, while are investigated in IT
> discipline are not created (published the like original initial ideas) in
> our journals! We are not so creative as other Computing and Managerial
> disciplines are. Finally, how many patents are linked to our IT
> discipline from our IT academic community? Do we need a re-invention of
> our disci h other approach are required. Thanks, Manuel Mora, EngD. PS. I
> believe we have lost the historical memory of IT leaders that have shaped
> our IT discipline, and that deserve a special ranking of IT Academics.
> The IT research rankings measures other dimensions but not the overall
> impact and contribution to our IT discipline.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Manuel Mora, EngD.
> Full Professor and Researcher "C" Level
> Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
> Ave. Universidad 940
> Aguascalientes, Ags.
> México 20100
> www.uaa.mx ----------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AISWorld mailing list
> AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org
>
>


-- 
----------------------------------------------
Manuel Mora, EngD.
Full Professor and Researcher "C" Level
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
Ave. Universidad 940
Aguascalientes, Ags.
México 20100
www.uaa.mx
----------------------------------------------