[AISWorld] Senior Scholars' modified wording regarding the basket of journals

[Moez Limayem]

Colleagues,

In their last meeting in Shanghai, the members of the Senior Scholars Consortium decided to change the wording of their recommendations regarding the basket of IS journals as follows:



"The Senior Scholar Consortium encourages colleagues, as well as deans and department chairs, to treat a "basket" of 8  journals as top journals in our field. Such a list is intended to provide more consistency and meaningfulness to tenure and promotion cases. This list was adopted from a formal statement by the "Senior Scholars Consortium" as of 23 April 2007 and revised on December 6, 2011. The Senior Scholars Consortium consists of senior information systems academics who have served as editors-in-chief of the journals listed in the Senior Scholars Consortium basket of 8 journals, current and former ICIS chairs and program chairs, current and former presidents of AIS as well as all Leo and AIS Fellow Awards winners.

The journal list is limited to those in the "IS field," and omits multidisciplinary outlets on one hand and specialty areas on the other.

Nevertheless, the list recognizes topical, methodological, and geographic diversity. In addition, the review processes are stringent, editorial board members are widely-respected and recognized, and there is international readership and contribution.

It is important to note that a short journal list such as this is most appropriate for PhD-granting, research-oriented universities, and most likely not at all appropriate in cases where there are few research resources and high teaching loads. In those cases, this short journal list should be augmented liberally by careful deliberation of departments and/or department chairs. For instance, at the teaching-intensive end of the spectrum, many schools (perhaps appropriately) count all refereed outlets. Publishing in this small set of journals is exceedingly difficult already, and nearly impossible without abundant resources for careful research.

The Senior Scholar Consortium emphasizes that this list should not be construed as a replacement for assessments based on objective measures such as citation indices or author affiliation indices. It should also not be seen as a substitute for assessments based on large-sample opinion surveys currently summarized on AISWorld. It is meant to provide an alternative, based on the opinions of the members of the Senior Scholars Consortium. All departments and/or department chairs should consider those other resources before making their final decisions.

Augmenting the list can also be important in some research schools. For example, in schools with a highly technical focus, the adopted journal list should obviously include highly-rated and/or highly-cited technical journals. Other programs draw from and contribute to a multidisciplinary base, and should include journals from other fields such as Computer Science, Economics, Psychology, Biometrics, and Human-Computer Interaction. The Senior Scholars focused on behavioral, business-oriented IS research, which might reflect a majority, but is not a universal model that fits (or even should fit) all schools. It strengthens our discipline to integrate our knowledge with other fields, and provides more choices for students, so interdisciplinary work should be encouraged.

The eight journals in the list are, in alphabetical order:

  *   European Journal of Information Systems
  *   Information Systems Journal
  *   Information Systems Research
  *   Journal of AIS
  *   Journal of Information Technology
  *   Journal of MIS
  *   Journal of Strategic Information Systems
  *   MIS Quarterly

Please let us know if this list provides helpful guidance to you in tenure and promotion cases, especially for those in schools currently with only two journals listed in the "A" category. Given the stringent nature of reviews in many of our journals, and infrequency of our publications, we believe that this basket of eight will take a step towards evening the score with other business disciplines.

Members of the Senior Scholars Consortium
December 2011"






Moreover, the following two recommendations were adopted by the Senior Scholars in the Shanghai meeting:


1.       "The list of 8 top quality, broad-based journals should be reexamined by a committee of senior scholars every 5 years.   Such a committee would make recommendations to the senior scholars, who in turn would chose to make recommendations to the AIS council for publication.   Such review should consider criteria for inclusion in the list, the specific list of journals included, and the process for reconsideration to continually increase participation and transparency."



2.      "Continued international research efforts should be encouraged to monitor developments in journal assessment, particularly regarding peer evaluation through opinion surveys, citation analyses when they remove self-citations such as the Thompson five year JIF window (Straub and Anderson, 2009), and other methods as well as continuing to assess the effect of the basket on individual and institutional stakeholders."

Thank you and Best Regards,

Moez


Moez Limayem, Ph.D
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs
Edwin & Karlee Bradberry Chair in Information Systems
Sam M. Walton College of Business
University of Arkansas


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