[AISWorld] A small revolution in the IS field

[mmora at securenym.net]

Dear Professor Nik Hassan and AIS colleagues:
It is true that MIS/IT research has produced very useful and theoretically
well-found knowledge (in the early and middle stages 60's, and 70'-80s)
but my general impression is that we have lost the humility of recognizing
the contributions of our colleagues from the 50-100 MIS available
journals. The impact factor over 4.5 to 5.0 from the MIS/IT top-5 journals
is not normal when it is compared with other disciplines.For instance
please consider two interesting cases: Management Science or IEEE
Intelligent Systems journals

2011 Impact Factor: 1.733 - 5-Year Impact: 3.304 for Management Science

According to the new Journal Citation Report released by Thomson Reuters
in June, IEEE Intelligent Systems' impact factor (IF) was 3.144 in 2009,
making it the number one publication in the AI field.


So, the quality gap between top-5 MIS journals and the remainder 45 it
seems more artificially created/induced than really gained in the
last 20 years. It does not imply that such papers are not of
well-recognized overall quality but that they over-valued on the
papers published in the remainder 45-95 MIS journals. It generates strong
implications for MIS Faculty regarding tenure promotions, acknowledgements
and academic status for promoting some MIS research topics and methods and
for blocking other ones outside of such a power circle. More on the
problem: as a Latin American academic, we are totally excluded to publish
in such journals. Even Latin colleagues working in USA or Europe
with some exceptions (a search in Google scholar could produce not more
than 15-30 papers in the last 30 years in MIS discipline)
but the academic surprise is that in other disciplines: Computer
Sciences,Biology, or Mathematics, Latin academics and Latin Institutions
are totally recognized and are published in top worldwide journals! In
summary, our discipline has lost the humility to recognize the
value of MIS research realized in small business, and outside countries of
the main top five. As a final comment, research realized
in Computer Sciences, Medicine, and Biology -as examples- is conducted
with a high motivation and involvement of the researchers on such specific
research problem: it implies that they want really to get a better applied
solution, theoretical knowledge or research tool; they live the real
problem and maybe suffers jointly with users the real problematic but also
enjoy with the reached solution! In MIS discipline such human values
were always present in the early 60'-80s period, but it seems we have
changed to value other human pseudo-values.

MIS discipline is not wrong, maybe we -the MIS people- are wrong! Well,
anyway, have an excellent 2013 !
Professor Manuel Mora
Mexico