[AISWorld] CFP: AMCIS 2020 Track in Meta-Research in Information Systems

[Michael Cuellar]

CALL FOR PAPERS: AMCIS 2020 August 12-16 Salt Lake City, Utah, USA –

Track in META-RESEARCH IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS 

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IMPORTANT DATES
- January 6:   Submission system Opens

- February 28 | 5:00 pm MST: Paper submission deadline
- April 15 |  Authors notified of decisions
- April 22 |  5:00 pm MST: Camera Ready papers are due

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TRACK DESCRIPTION
Following on the success of this track in 2018 and 2019 this track serves as the primary point of contribution and subsequent publication of innovative meta-research articles. Meta-research (research on research) is a venerable and valuable research stream within Information Systems. Meta-research is the discussion that goes on between IS scholars on issues surrounding the production of IS research.  It includes such areas as discussions of the structure and development of the field, the core and boundaries of the field, field legitimacy, scholar/department/journal/ country ranking methods, discussions of research culture and practices, methods of evaluation of scholarship, literature reviews and research commentaries.
The purpose of the track includes showcasing unique and leading edge empirical, theoretical, and commentary papers in the area of meta-research. Typically, there has not been a good location for these types of papers within the structure of the usual tracks provided.  This track provides a welcoming space for such papers.

There are several minitracks within this track:

Minitrack 1: General Topics in IS Meta-Research

Minitrack Chair: Hirotoshi Takeda (hirotoshi.takeda at maine.edu)

IS Research is a diverse field, whether it be qualitative or quantitative, drawing from many theories, methodologies, and uses in society. Meta-research aims to improve and evaluate research. In this track, we will accept papers that conduct research on understanding or evaluating other IS research. This mini-track will serve as a place where authors can submit their work that may not precisely fit into other meta-research mini-tracks.

Topics covered in this mini-track might include:

-        Core and Boundaries of the Information Systems Field

-        Field legitimacy and place within academia

-        Methods of evaluating scholarship, tenure and promotion practices e.g Cuellar (2016), Dennis (2006)

-        Scholar/department/journal/ country ranking methods, e.g. Lowry et al (2007; 2004)

-        Research Culture and Practices e.g. Lyttinen (2007)

-        Social Capital in IS

Minitrack 2: Research Commentaries/Literature Reviews in IS

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Gaurav Bansal (bansalg at uwgb.edu)
Donald Heath (heathd at uwosh.edu)

As information Systems matures as a discipline, there is a need to conduct and publish research on meta-analysis to synthesize the findings and to identify the potential research gaps and future research agenda. Such meta-analysis can help identify critical research gaps and help us identify the questions that have been answered, and also the ones that still remain unanswered. The meta-analysis also helps the body of evidence to determine the contextual factors and enhance our understanding of how and when they work. Such contextual knowledge can help us understand the contextual features associated with our theories and help identify what planned intervention is likely to be most powerful. Such meta-analysis will help contextualize our findings, and It will help fine-tune our research questions and will help provide more meaningful guidance to practitioners. Thus, this minitrack is focusing on inviting papers that provide theory-based, literature-based, or quantitative analysis based meta-analysis based on IS research.

Minitrack 3: Reconciling Related Theories

Minitrack Chair:  Eleanor Wynn (eleanorwynn3 at gmail.com)

The Information Systems field has enjoyed an abundance of relevant theory, partly because its academic culture arises from multiple disciplines, including social sciences and management, and partly because the publication structure affords the rise of new outlets. This diversity of outlets continually brings in new theoretical material. However, the discipline has also entertained overlapping theories within the domains of hermeneutics and social construction, each with its own vocabulary. We seek papers that compare constructs across different metatheoretical bases. Topics might include:

-        comparative vocabularies and semantic boundary-creation

-        direct applicability to analysis of data (of any kind, be it survey, text, observational)

-        identification of overlaps and contradictions

-        patterns of exclusion of related theory

-        notions of the social, of the technical, and of the combination

-        perceived trends and recurrences

-        current relevance to emergent problems like platforms and infrastructuring

Minitrack 4: Decolonizing Ontologies, Networking Philosophies

Minitrack Chair: Bruce Janz (bruce.janz at ucf.edu)

In this mini-track, we are looking for papers that rethink the relationship between information and cultural or emplaced philosophies, that is, philosophy which acknowledges its debts and duties to its places of formation while recognizing its place in larger networks of thought. Philosophy’s approach to information has been dominated by philosophies of information (accounts of ontologies and structures of information flow), but have inadequately interrogated philosophy as information, that is, as networks and flows of thought and cognitive processes. The reasons for this are clear – philosophy’s self-conception is as something that rises above its modes and conditions of production and audiences. This is changing as Western philosophy realizes that philosophies rooted in non-Western places and queer, non-white, non-male, and/or disabled experiences might create significant new concepts. Information science can learn from this realization – what does it look like to take indigenous, African, Asian and other ontologies seriously as models of knowledge production, authorization, and transfer? Topics might include:

-        Scholars such as Eduardo Kohn, Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, Philippe Descola, Sylvia Wynter, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Achille Mbembe, Rosi Braidotti, Tim Ingold, Tobie Nathan, Isabelle Stengers, Edouard Glissant, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Ernst von Glasersfeld

-        Enactivist (4E) cognitive science as a model for cultural thinking and for understanding information

-        Cultural forms as philosophy and as information networks: Ubuntu, palavers, translocality, cannibal metaphysics, biopower

Track Co-Chairs:

Michael Cuellar,

Georgia Southern University, 

mcuellar at georgiasouthern.edu <mailto:mcuellar at georgiasouthern.edu>
 

Duane Truex,

Georgia State University, 

Dtruex at gsu.edu <mailto:Dtruex at gsu.edu>
 

References

 

Cuellar, M. J., Takeda, H., Vidgen, R., and Truex III, D. P. 2016. "Ideational Influence, Connectedness, and Venue Representation: Making an Assessment of Scholarly Capital," Journal of the Association for Information Systems (17:1), pp. 1-28.

Dennis, A. R., Valacich, J. S., Fuller, M. A., and Schneider, C. 2006. "Research Standards for Promotion and Tenure in Information Systems," MIS Quarterly (30:1), pp. 1-12.

Holmström, J., and Truex, D. 2011. "Dropping Your Tools: Exploring When and How Theories Can Serve as Blinders in Is Research," Communications of the AIS (28:1), pp. article 19, 28 pgs.

Lowry, P. B., Karuga, G. G., and Richardson, V. J. 2007. "Assessing Leading Institutions, Faculty, and Articles in Premier Information Systems Research Journals," Communications of the Association for Information Systems (20), pp. 142-203.

Lowry, P. B., Romans, D., and Curtis, A. 2004. "Global Journal Prestige and Supporting Disciplines: A Scientometric Study of Information Systems Journals," Journal of the Association of Information Systems (5:2), pp. 29-77.

Lyytinen, K., Baskerville, R., Iivari, J., and Te'eni, D. 2007. "Why the Old World Cannot Publish? Overcoming Challenges in Publishing High-Impact Is Research," European Journal of Information Systems (16), pp. 317-326.

Orlikowski, W. J., and Iacono, C. S. 2001. "Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the "IT" in IT Research--a Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact," Information Systems Research (12:2), pp. 121-134.