[AISWorld] Significance of JMIS joining the FT list

[Galletta, Dennis]

As a member of the JMIS editorial board as well as an author, too, I wanted to be very cautious about congratulating JMIS in my previous message so that it wasn't seen as self-serving. But as I re-read my note after receiving a private follow-up from an acquaintance of mine from the other side of the world, I didn't think my original message was very fair to the journal and didn't point out the large positive impact on the field.

Inclusion of JMIS on the Financial Times list is as much a milestone for the field as it is for JMIS. Many speculated in some recent chatter on AISWorld that perhaps the Financial Times was not taking our field seriously, so this appears to help ease that worry. It perhaps paves the way for further expansion of the list in the future.

Expanding our FT footprint by 50% (from two to three MIS-exclusive journals on the list) is a significant step forward for the field, and we are getting closer to being represented in proportion to other fields. My simple-minded calculation based on the previous message from Gary Templeton is that our new target would now be 4.7 journals - see the postscript below).

Whatever your opinion of the FT50, lists like the FT50 are extremely influential. Some schools adopt these lists automatically to define their "A list" so career decisions can hang in the balance. The addition of JMIS will help many authors receive the recognition they deserve from those papers. There is a small downside to authors, though: submissions will likely increase, making for greater competition to publish in JMIS! The new happy problem will be the needed expansion of the editorial board to handle that additional workload. Also, the name of the journal will not need to be modified if it finds the need to expand and publish monthly!

In any event, JMIS should have been on the list twenty years ago, mainly because progress is very slow in academia. Congratulations to Vladimir and the others at JMIS! I'm predicting that some champagne corks will pop loudly enough to be heard at the Financial Times offices!

Sincerely,
Dennis Galletta

PS

Explaining our new goal of 4.7 journals:

Note the quote from Gary Templeton's AISWorld posting six days ago:


"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."



If we now use a base of 50, our "share" of the journals in the new FT50 list should be 4.7 (9.45% x 50).



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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral Program
282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of Business
Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA  15260
E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1 412-624-3633
        katz.pitt.edu                       homepage: www.pitt.edu/~galletta<http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta>
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