[AISWorld] Most Influential Information Systems Papers

Sat Jul 16 16:43:55 EDT 2016

Dear all;
I want to point out something that is a bit disturbing to me in all of this (wonderful, actually)  discussion. First, let me say that I agree that we are publishing "more and more about less and less" - our research is becoming VERY narrow and the optics are, as others have observed, that the publish-or-perish dynamic has gone out of control and that we now seem to be publishing for the sake of our tenure packages and that citation counts seem to mean more that actual content or knowledge creation.  Second: I do think that we need to be cognisant of the nature of our discipline - we deal with both the theoretical and the applied - so, yes, we need to have a healthy dose of applicability in our overall, discipline-wide research agendae.
Having said that - there seems to be a tacit acceptance in these comments that "impact" - which I'm reading as being tied to some form of business applicability - is not just the primary reason for research but the only worthwhile research endeavour.  From my perspective, we, as academics, also have a duty to explore and to create and disseminate new knowledge/understanding within the bounds of our discipline:not everything has to translate into  new products/services.
Two cents, Canadian : - )

Bob Willis

Dr. R. A. (Bob) Willis BA MBA PhD
Professor
Faculty of Management
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, BC, CANADA
http://web.viu.ca/willisr/Index.html
http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/robert-willis/10/879/809

________________________________________
From: AISWorld [aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] on behalf of ilia [ilia at ibissoft.se]
Sent: July-16-16 1:01 PM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Most Influential Information Systems Papers

On 2016-07-15 6:06 PM, Land,F wrote:
> Dear Samir
>
> Some of us have been questioning the value of IS research for some time.  It gets even worse: the language we use, even for potentially valuable research, is foreign to most practitioners.
True, and the following paper tries to explain why from a systems
perspective in general, and Luhmann's theory of organizations in particular:

Alfred Kieser & Lars Leiner "Why the Rigour–Relevance Gap in Management
Research Is Unbridgeable", Journal of Management Studies, Volume 46,
Issue 3, pages 516–533, May 2009

Though I do not agree with all they say, the analysis of the phenomenon
looks convincing to me.
> Can the younger generation save IS?
Save in what sense? IS research becoming relevant? IMHO, not unless
efforts are made to bring about a "bilingual" generation, prolific in
both research and practice. Personally I do not see any efforts of the
kind being made :-(.

Cheers

Ilia
> Frank Land
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Niels Bjørn-Andersen
> Sent: 11 July 2016 20:08
> To: Samir Chatterjee; ISWorld
> Subject: Re: [AISWorld] Most Influential Information Systems Papers
>
> Dear Samir,
>
>
>
> I share your concern about the real impact of our IS research
>
> Too much is only published for citations by our mutual admiration club, and we would all have a very hard time to argue why taxpayers or students should spend money on that. Why should they feed us, if we don't provide value?
>
>
>
> Look to the UK Research Assessment, where 20% is impact on society or real organizations in 2014. I am prepared to bet my pension that this figure will increase in UK, and that it will come to other countries. And how many of us have something to show for that?
>
>
>
> I think it is a brilliant idea to post 'success stories' on a web-page - at least as inspiration for the rest of us.
>
>
>
> Best
>
> Niels
>
> Professor Niels Bjørn-Andersen
> Department  of IT Management
> Copenhagen Business School
> Howitzvej 60,room 3.09
> 2000 Frederiksberg
> Danmark
> nba at cbs.dk<mailto:nba at cbs.dk>
> office phone: (+45) 38 15 44 44
> mobile phone: (+45) 24 79 43 07
> Skype: Niels.Bjorn.Andersen
> http://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-it-management/staff/nbaitm
>
> Danish Digital Champion to the EU appointed by Danish government.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AISWorld [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Samir Chatterjee
> Sent: 10. juli 2016 21:08
> To: ISWorld <AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org>
> Subject: [AISWorld] Most Influential Information Systems Papers
>
>
>
> Hello All,
>
>
>
> In our IS community we periodically tend to talk about elite journals by name (such as MISQ, ISR, JMIA or JAIS etc) and get bogged down by which journal gets into FT 45 or not. Very seldom do we take the time to actually discuss what papers/content published in these journals actually have an influence. When I talk about influence, I mean not only high citations (researchers are referring the work) but also real-world impact which is something that was actually built, implemented and even commercialized for societal benefit. While we tend to have high citation papers in our field but IS suffers in the latter. For example I am aware of highly influential work by Jay Nunamaker on GDSS which actually saw the light of day as real people used those group systems.
>
>
>
> I will admit that I am a computer scientist who accidentally became an IS professor. But honestly I see our field as obsessed about journal prestige but very little attention is paid to what work has actually benefitted mankind.
>
>
>
> I did a quick search about influential papers in CS and found some highly interesting work cited.
>
>
>
> 1.Claude Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" has over 63,000 citation and is the basis of all communication systems in use today.
>
>
>
> 2. S Brin, L Page. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine <http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?cid=6538>. in Proc. of 7th International WWW Conference, 1998 Has over 3623 citations and is of course the basis of Google search engine that has changed the world forever.
>
>
>
> 3. R Rivest, A Shamir, L Adleman. A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems <http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?cid=10320>. Communications of the ACM, 1978 Has over 3175 citations and is the foundation RSA technology which is now used extensively in S/MIME, and TLS and other network security protocols.
>
>
>
> These are a few sample examples. There are many others..
>
>
>
> So here is what I propose. Please send me a cited paper and tell me why you feel the paper is infuential for IS community. I will start a Wikipedia page and add those influential papers to the site so that future IS researchers have a must read set of articles.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Samir
>
>
>
> --
>
> Dr. Samir Chatterjee
>
> Professor
>
> School of Information Systems & Technology Claremont Graduate University
>
> 130 East 9th Street, Claremont, CA 91711
>
> (P) 909-607-4651; (cell) 909-730-8898
>
> profsamir1 at gmail.com<mailto:profsamir1 at gmail.com>
>
> http://sites.cgu.edu/chatterjees/
>
>
>
> Director, *Innovations Design Empowerment Applications Laboratory* (IDEA
>
> Labs) http://www.idea-labs.net/
>
> Associate Editor: Health Systems, IJBDCN Editorial Board: Journal of AIS
>
> Member: IEEE (senior), ACM (senior), AIS, AMIA
>
> Author: http://designscienceresearch.wordpress.com/about/
>
> 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner for Contributions to Design Science (by AIS DSR community) _______________________________________________
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--
===============================================
Dr. Ilia Bider
Process- och systemutvecklingskonsult at IbisSoft.se
Lektor & Forskare/Docent i data- och systemvetenskap at DSV.su.se
ilia at ibissoft.se        +46 (0)8 164998
Software project as a socio-technical system: http://bit.ly/1TKgnf6

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