Insights from an Information Systems Journal Editor

Publishing in Information Systems: An Editor s Perspective Robert M Davison Dept of Information Systems City University of Hong Kong Editor: Information Systems Journal & Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries 1

An Editors Reflections The ISJ receives approx. 650 articles per annum, yet many of the submissions are unsuitable for publication, even after extensive revision One of my editorial tasks is to reject the papers that don t fit the ISJ or have no hope of surviving the review process, but if I reject too many, there are not enough to publish! Naturally, what I really want is to publish high quality papers that will be read, liked, and cited. Papers that advance knowledge. I hope that this is also what the authors want but 2

Authors Motivations I hope that this is not typical but one of my PhD students retorted: I don t care who reads my paper or if it is cited, so long as I can publish it in a top journal because that will help to secure my first job Well, OK (!!!) but, perhaps the editor does care (even if you don t) Actually, I do see a lot of papers that simply don t fit the ISJ They might fit other IS journals like ISR, JMIS I hope that authors would read the journal before they submit to it Some submissions cite a lot of MISQ, JMIS, papers but don t cite any in ISJ! What s going on? Probably an MISQ/JMIS reject?! 3

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (or borderline)? It is dangerous (and subjective) to try and characterise good, bad, borderline papers, given variations in data, method, epistemology, Good papers don t have to be methodologically or analytically perfect, but they do have to tell an interesting story Good papers are often premised on a research problem that has been carefully thought out not on a gap spotted in the literature Good papers often make an intriguing contribution to theory, and to knowledge; they have a message for different stakeholders Good papers are well written and a joy to read! 4

Rigour Four Views! Reviewer: Your paper would be more rigorous if you employed a survey methodology and analysed your data with statistical techniques. Qualitative data is not rigorous! Author: Our study about IS in China has several major limitations in its rigour. (1) Our data is collected in one country. (2) We only interviewed people. We recommend future researchers to collect data in the USA with a survey PhD Student: Rigour means statistics . Editor: No one method is more rigorous than any other. Rigour means using the right method in the right way . 5

Fit Each journal is different A paper that is rejected at ISJ may be accepted (after revision) at MISQ, and vice versa Each journal has its style, its history, its culture If you read the journal regularly, you will get a sense of this In particular, pay attention to the editorials as these reflect the editor s thinking about research and other relevant topics Craft a paper with a journal in mind! If you get rejected, recraft it for a different journal. Demonstrate how your paper engages with the intellectual conversation that is taking place in the discipline, and even in the journal that you submit to. 6

An IS Worldview, Seen Through Editorials 1 22/6 24/3 Novelty The importance of context 27/6 28/1 The limitations of limitations Researchers and the stakeholders perspective 24/6 Culturally biased reviewers 28/2 The ethics of extended revisions 25/5 Constructive reviewing 28/4 Shifting baselines in IS research 26/3 Storytelling 28/5 Indigenous theory 27/2 Appreciating alien thinking 29/1 The art of vivacious variance 27/5 Why submit to the ISJ? 29/2 Serendipity: The happy discovery of unsought knowledge 7

An IS Worldview, Seen Through Editorials 2 29/3 For whom do we write? 30/5 The art of referencing 29/5 The tyranny of the H-index 31/1 From ignorance to familiarity 30/1 The question of relevance 31/2 Problematisation 30/2 Iconoclasm 31/4 SE and AE roles at the ISJ 30/3 30/4 On tailoring and hand-me-downs 32/1 Established theory rejection Predatory journals 32/3 Putting IS back into IS research 8

Highlights of those Editorials Culturally biased reviewers These are the reviewers who don t like your paper because it does not seem to relate to them personally. I am sure that you meet them often! I see them both as editor and as author! A reviewer of one of my own papers commented What s the point of collecting data in China? It can t be generalised to any other country. Instead, I advise you to collect data in America [!!!] Culturally biased authors We collected data from a large firm in the South West. We collected data from students at a small mid-Atlantic university. 9

Constructive Reviewing Can you, as a reviewer, actually help the authors to tell their story better, not just persuade them to tell the story that you would tell if you were the author?! As an author, a constructive, polite, friendly review is invaluable But most reviewers have a negative world view Their assumed responsibility is to find reasons to reject They are very good at that, and most reviews are profoundly negative In such an environment it can be a real struggle to accept papers Unless all the reviewers genuinely like the paper, or, unfortunately, the authors have revised the paper to death, thereby satisfying the reviewers but ridding the paper of all value, the editor may simply have to ignore the concerns of some reviewers 10

The Editors Prerogative I firmly believe that the review process should not be a democratic one! I see input from reviewers, as well as senior and associate editors. The reviewers provide commentary and feedback, but they are not voting The AE reads the paper independently, considers the reviews and makes a reasoned recommendation The SE further considers the paper and either confirms the AE s recommendation or not The Editor makes a decision. It may be consistent with the views of the reviewers, SE and AE, or it may not. Split recommendations are common. The editor has the prerogative, obligation and responsibility to decide 11

Storytelling It is critical that you can tell a story Ideally a story that captivates your audience and motivates them to keep reading Stories are powerful drivers of thinking and behaving, so they can also be powerful vehicles of communication for research Since each journal has a different audience, so it expects a different kind of story You need to read the published stories to get a sense of the way to write your own story 12

Challenges for the Editor I can t be an expert on everything So, I have to delegate and trust I want to be open and inclusive But each journal has its quirks and foibles As also do editors! No journal will accept anything and everything submitted. Most top journals reject ~90+% of submissions Finding the right balance is tricky As an editor, I need to be a diplomat and appreciate alien thinking! 13

The Shifting Baselines Conundrum With the passing of time, what we now accept as normal may be very different to the norms of the past, and what was normal 50 years ago is perhaps long forgotten by most of us. It used to be that IS research was predominantly related to I and S. Today, the field has changed: not just IT, but apps, social media, AI, ML, i4, and more I find that today s students are not always very well versed on theory; indeed, theory may be an unwelcome distraction that editors impose And those who favour big data and econometrics may dispense with theory altogether and much else besides Where should a journal (editor) stand? Which baseline? 14

Serendipity Much research seems to be planned in consummate detail. The results may be known before the study starts The hypotheses are invariably supported But where is the surprise value? Where is the opportunity to discover something unexpected? If all hypotheses were rejected, could that paper be accepted? Finding something that you are not looking for is a rare delight, a singular pleasure Should editors encourage serendipity? 15

Iconoclasm Research can be tedious and repetitive How many researchers dare to challenge the status quo? How many reviewers are broad-minded enough to accept radically new ways of looking at phenomena, especially if their own prior work is now the target of critique? Iconoclasts are, perhaps fortunately, few and far between, but we need them desperately. People who are willing to take a risk and say what they believe to be true, rather than dumbing down the impact of their findings so as to make them more palatable for reviewers. What should the Editor s position be? 16

The Art of Referencing Referencing is not just a way to show off what you know, and it is certainly not just a chance to drop names, willy-nilly Gobs of 5, 6 or more references are ridiculous Unless it is a review paper, no more than 10% of the paper should be refs Instead, it is the opportunity to demonstrate your respect for the giants (and norms) on whose shoulders you stand as you make your contribution Referencing can be political: your paper is accepted but you must cite these 6 papers . Can you cite so as to illustrate how you are linking your work to the intellectual conversation ongoing in the journal? 17

Problematisation or Gap Spotting? Gap spotting, which I refer to as research dentistry, is very popular After a thorough search of the literature, we found that no one has done this before, so here we go But why? Why bother? Who cares?! Instead, what is the real problem here? Why are you motivated to study it? How does your work build on prior work? How does your work contribute to a richer understanding of the phenomenon? If you can t sell the paper to me in the Introduction, I may not want to read the rest so all your arcane analyses will be lost. In essence this is the rigor vs relevance debate revisited. 18

From Ignorance to Familiarity The omniscient researcher is commonly seen in research papers! But how did the researcher become omniscient? What preparations were made to develop knowledge of the context before being thrown into the maelstrom of circumstances in the field? Learning the language, jargon? Transforming from ignorant to familiar? These details are seldom revealed, and the reader (who may want to learn how to become familiar) is left none the wiser. 19

The Importance of Context IS research is typically situated in a context Societal, Human, Organisational, Geographical Describing the context is important because it helps readers make sense of the research identifies the extent to which the results of research may reasonably be extrapolated Most research contexts are quite limited, so shouldn t the validity of findings also be limited? Just how far can validity reasonably extend? 20

Generalization Extensions of validity are often referred to as generalization Seddon and Scheepers (2012) suggest that generalization is the: act of arguing, by induction, that there is a reasonable expectation that a knowledge claim already believed to be true in one or more settings is also true in other clearly defined settings Lee and Baskerville (2003, 2012) observe that generalization operates in a number of ways: from a context to a different context; from a context to a new theory that the researchers develop; from a context to an existing theory that the researchers broaden with their new findings from a theory back to a context 21

For Example How can IT support the decision making processes and propensities of Swedish bankers? Lets assume that we studied a representative sample of them already We can probably be reasonably certain that our findings can be generalized to other Swedish bankers. We could also generalize to a theory that was specific to this population. But what about Portuguese bankers? Fijian bankers? Congolese bankers? Russian Bankers? And how about Swedish doctors or Nepalese janitors or Colombian narcotraficantes or American politicians or Singaporean students? How far can one reasonably generalize beyond the immediate context? 22

Boundary Conditions To what extent can we plausibly generalize from one occupational group or societal culture to another? To what extent are the findings of a study strictly limited to the original context? These questions highlight the importance of boundary conditions, and therefore context. All research designs are implicitly or explicitly bounded Boundaries include the physical and professional contexts, the societal culture, perhaps gender and orientation Contemporary IS research designs tend to involve very specific contexts, yet the contextual details are seldom explored in any detail If anything the context is seen as an unavoidable limitation, not an asset 23

Theories and Contextual Deficiencies As researchers, we tend to borrow theories from other disciplines assume that these theories are universal ignore any contextual or boundary condition specificities assert that the theoretically-informed results from our study will equally apply in other contexts ignore local / indigenous characteristics, even as theory testing is constrained to a very local set of circumstances. 24

For instance Zhong et al. (2012) investigated the applicability of transactive memory systems to knowledge sharing by virtual teams in China. They drew primarily on the Western literature. They failed to model any China-specific cultural factors that could plausibly have influenced team member behaviour. There is a contribution, an etic test of the theory But the lack of indigenous characteristics that might also have helped explain the nature of knowledge exchange arrangements in the particular context of China is troubling. 25

In contrast Young et al. (2012) drew extensively on the Chinese concept of face to examine how Taiwanese teachers contribute to knowledge portals. They found that teachers were reluctant to contribute due to a fear of the negative gaze (Bourdieu) that they might receive from others. Face is by no means exclusively Chinese, but it is an important driver of behaviour in the Chinese context, and likely elsewhere. Further studies on the impact of face (and other indigenous factors) are desirable. In my own work, I look at guanxi (relationships) in the Chinese context, and examine their impact on work. 26

Responsible IS Research for a Better World Geoff Walsham (2012) asked Are We Making the World a Better Place with Information Systems? . Is this a moral obligation for researchers? Should we care? Can responsible research really lead to a better world? 27

Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) RRBM has the avowed focus of inspiring, encouraging, and supporting credible and useful research in the business and management disciplines (http://rrbm.network). Is it enough to be credible and useful? How about also consumable? Or implementable? Perhaps we need to measure the actual impact, not the number of citations but the actual value that the research brings to stakeholders. 28

RR in IS? Zheng and Yu s (2016) study of the socialised affordances of social media in the processes of collective action, with a detailed examination of the Free Lunch for Children charity in China Tim et al. s (2017) exploration of how the boundary-spanning competences of social media function as a digital response mechanism in natural disasters D az Andrade and Doolin s (2016) account of how ICTs contribute to the social inclusion of newly settled refugees. At the ISJ, we have an ongoing special issue on RR in IS Papers accepted so far include: 29

ISJ SI RR Information Technology as a Resource to Counter Domestic Sex Trafficking in the United States A Framework for Applying Ethics-by-Design to Decision Support Systems for Emergency Management Do-it-yourself as a means for making assistive technology accessible to elderly people: Evidence from the iCare project Responsible Innovation with Digital Platforms: Cases in India and Canada 30

Is Green IS Research Responsible? Research into green IS often takes the view that a green image can help the corporate bottom line, yet fails to consider whether there are any net benefits for the environment (cf. Elliot and Webster, 2017). So, whose interests are researchers promoting? The environment or the corporate? How does the environment benefit from green IS research? Clarke & Davison (2020) observe that 93% of IS research only favours the interests of the organisation. 0% directly considers the interests of the environment. 31

Relevant Issues for IS Research Today 1 Poverty alleviation Providing banking services for the unbanked Enhancing or protecting the environment Creating social value for individual citizens, especially in marginalised communities Catering to the legitimate workplace needs of employees Supporting social entrepreneurship 32

Relevant Issues for IS Research Today 2 Enforcing protection of data privacy rights Developing policies that strengthen the rights of employees and citizens in civil society and the rights of non-human actors (fauna, flora, natural ecosystems) in the environment. Contributing directly to one or more of the UN s Sustainable Development Goals Critiquing existing projects as to whether and how they support equity/inequity [[NB: I didn t mention blockchain, AI, ML, i4, etc. These are techniques that could be applied to address problems]] 33

Thank You! 34

17 SDGs 1. Poverty 2. Food 3. Health 4. Education 5. Gender equality 6. Water 7. Energy 8. Economic Growth & Employment 9. Infrastructure & industrialization 10.Transnational inequality 11.Safety and sustainability of cities 12.Sustainable consumption/production 13.Climate change 14.Marine resources 15.Terrestrial ecosystems 16.Peace, inclusion, justice, accountability 17.Revitalize the global partnership 35

References Clarke, R. (2017) Personal Data Markets and Privacy: A Critical Content Analysis of Published Works, Working Paper, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, March http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/MPCA.html Clarke, R. and Davison, R.M. (2020) Through Whose Eyes? The Critical Concept of Research Perspective, Journal of the AIS 21, 2, 483-501 D az Andrade, A. and Doolin, B. (2016) Information and Communication Technology and the Social Inclusion of Refugees, MIS Quarterly 40, 2, 405-416. Elliot, S. and Webster, J. (2017) Editorial: Special Issue on Empirical Research on Information Systems Addressing the Challenges of Environmental Sustainability: An Imperative for Urgent Action, Information Systems Journal 27, 4, 367-378. Lee, A.S. & Baskerville, R.L. (2003) Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research, Information Systems Research 14(3): 221-243. Lee, A.S. & Baskerville, R.L. (2012) Conceptualizing Generalizability: New contributions and a reply, MIS Quarterly 36(3): 749-761. Seddon, P. & Scheepers, R. (2012) Towards the Improved Treatment of Generalization of Knowledge Claims in IS Research: Drawing general conclusions from samples, European Journal of Information Systems 21(1): 6-21. Tim, Y., Pan, S.L., Ractham, P. and Kaewkitipong, L. (2017) Digitally Enabled Disaster Response: The Emergence of Social Media as Boundary Objects in a Flooding Disaster, Information Systems Journal 27, 2, 197-232. Walsham, G. (2012). Are We Making a Better World with ICTs? Reflections on a Future Agenda for the IS Field, Journal of Information Technology 27, 2, 87-93. Young, M.L., Kuo, F.Y. & Myers, M.D. (2012) To Share or not to Share: A critical research perspective on knowledge management systems, European Journal of Information Systems 21(5): 496-511. Zheng, Y.Q. and Yu, A. (2016) Affordances of Social Media in Collective Action: The Case of Free Lunch for Children in China, Information SysteZhong, X.P., Huang, Q., Davison, R.M., Yang, X. and Chen, H.P. (2012) Empowering Teams through Social Network Ties, International Journal of Information Management 32(3): 209-220. 36