[AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

Tue Jun 7 20:59:19 EDT 2016

Friends and colleagues, 

My co-authors and I have three scientometrics studies (published in MISQ and
JAIS) that support Gary's similar scientometrics evidence of MISQ, ISR,
JMIS, then JAIS. But similar to Dennis' point, the results were very close
at the top (except for MISQ). 

To me, the bigger problem is that the FT-45 list is constructed by having
deans "vote," which is a process fraught with political preference and other
obvious biases. Accordingly, the FT-45 list has a good number of journals on
it that are of much lower scientometric quality than JMIS and JAIS (and even
the rest of the AIS-8). It even has journals that are not business journals
(e.g., J. of Political Economy, J. American Statistical Association). This
list also has a couple of journals that do not follow standard peer review
or scientific theory/evidence (e.g., SMR, HBR). Scientometric journal
quality evidence is on our side, and thus, we should use it in making our
case to our deans.

Regardless, I don't think we should expend a lot of effort debating JMIS vs.
JAIS, but agree as a community to send both forward, and promote the next
top IS journals where possible. There's very strong evidence for the next
four journals of the AIS-8.

Thus, please approach your deans using scientific evidence, not voting based
on political preference or journals your group wants to publish in. The
evidence is on our side. Aside from Gary's recent article, Valacich et al.
2006 published a similar article showing that the IS field has much fewer
"top" journal publishing opportunities than every other business field
except accounting. Unfortunately, the FT-45 list has helped create this
problem.

See more references to help with your case.

Paul

Templeton, G.F. & Lewis, B.R., 2015. "Fairness in the Institutional
Valuation of Business Journals," MIS Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 523-539.

Valacich, J. S., Fuller, M. A., Schneider, C., and Dennis, A. R. 2006.
"Publication Opportunities in Premier Business Outlets: How Level Is the
Playing Field?," Information Systems Research, (17:2), pp. 107-125.

Paul Benjamin Lowry, Gregory D. Moody, James Eric Gaskin, Dennis F.
Galletta, Sean Humpherys, Jordan B. Barlow, and David W. Wilson (2013).
"Evaluating journal quality and the Association for Information Systems
(AIS) Senior Scholars' journal basket via bibliometric measures: Do expert
journal assessments add value?" MIS Quarterly (MISQ), vol. 37(4), 993-1012.
Also, see YouTube video narrative of this paper at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQIDkA-ke0&feature=youtu.be.

Douglas L. Dean, Paul Benjamin Lowry, and Sean Humpherys (2011). "Profiling
the research productivity of tenured information systems faculty at U.S.
institutions," MIS Quarterly (MISQ), vol. 35(1), pp. 1-15 (ISSN- 0276-7783).

Paul Benjamin Lowry, Denton Romans, and Aaron Curtis (2004). "Global journal
prestige and supporting disciplines: A scientometric study of information
systems journals," Journal of the Association for Information Systems
(JAIS), vol. 5(2), pp. 29-80

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of
Dennis, Alan R.
Sent: Wednesday, June 8, 2016 8:17 AM
To: 'Templeton, Gary' <GTempleton at business.msstate.edu>;
aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List
Revision

We just finished examining the results of the AIS Senior Scholars Journal
Basket survey.  We got 975 responses. MISQ and ISR were one and two.  JAIS
was three and JMIS was four, although there was no significant difference
between JAIS and JMIS. 

So I strongly recommend MISQ, ISR, JAIS, JMIS, and a journal of your choice.

Alan

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of
Templeton, Gary
Sent: Monday, June 6, 2016 11:27 PM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: [AISWorld] Addressing the Financial Times 45 Journal List Revision

IS faculty,

Financial Times is adjusting their list of top 45 business journals. Deans
across the globe are being surveyed for journals that should be on the list.
IS faculty across the world are making suggestions to their deans about the
proper contents of the list.

How many IS journals should be on the list? The current list contains 2
(MISQ and ISR) of the 45, or 4.4%. My recent publication with Bruce Lewis on
business journal fairness addresses this issue. According to AACSB faculty
data, 9.45% of business faculty are in the IS discipline. This translates to
4.25 (9.45% X 45) journal slots for the IS discipline.

Because FT45 is largely a public relations venue and not scientific, the IS
discipline should respond accordingly. We should certainly have at least 4
on the list, but that assumes it is a scientific list. I think we should ask
for 5 for fear of selling ourselves short.

Bruce and I have published two rankings (one IS and the other all business)
that summarize samples of institutional lists (those used in "practice"). We
found strong evidence that our field views JMIS to be the clear third most
esteemed journal in our field.

At a minimum, I think the vast majority would agree that MISQ, ISR and JMIS
should be in the top three. However, only submitting 3 (or 4) to our deans,
may not serve our field well. I suspect there would be more argument about
#4 and #5. It would help if members of our research community could come to
an agreement and pose this top 5 to our deans.

I wonder if our group could come to an agreement in such a short time, and
we could make recommendations to our deans in a uniform way.

Gary

Reference:

Templeton, G.F. & Lewis, B.R., 2015. "Fairness in the Institutional
Valuation of Business Journals," MIS Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 523-539.
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