Editorial Notes
In Memoriam: Scholar, Friend, and Colleague
The IS community mourns the unexpected passing of one of our most accomplished scholars: Sandra Slaughter, holder of the Costley Chair in Information Technology Management at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology. Sandy, as we all knew her, exemplified all of the qualities of an exceptional scholar and teacher: her accomplishments in research were unsurpassed, making invaluable contributions to our understanding of important IT phenomena ranging from project management to human capital to open source communities. As a teacher, she influenced the lives of hundreds of students and her scholarship lives on in the Ph.D. students she has so assiduously trained. Importantly, Sandy was a warm, generous, and giving person, and a beloved friend, and colleague to many of us. She had a longstanding relationship with ISR and INFORMS, having served as senior editor for ISR, and department editor for the IS department at Management Science. Sandy will be sorely missed by our community.
2014: The Year in Reprise
As we look forward to the New Year, it is instructive to reflect on the achievements of the journal in 2014. In 2014, as in the past, ISR continued and reinforced its mission to publish the “best” research in the IS discipline that addresses consequential topics of academic, practice, and policy relevance with rigor. The journal published a total of 47 papers in Volume 25, including research commentaries, regular articles, and research notes. This final issue also includes a special section on “Information, Technology, and the Changing Nature of Work” guest edited by a team of accomplished scholars: Chris Forman, John King, and Kalle Lyytinen. The number of papers ISR is able to accommodate continues to grow, with the support of INFORMS and generous contributions by the Information Systems Society (ISS). In 2014, the journal published a total of 892 pages, representing a substantial increase over the 609 pages from just five years ago in 2009. ISR now has a lead time from acceptance to publication of less than nine months! So please submit your best work in information systems to ISR; it will be visible and widely disseminated in a short period of time.
It is incontrovertible that IT is transforming all aspects of economic, social, and personal transactions. ISR continues to be at the vanguard in publishing research that addresses various aspects of the changes wrought by IT. In 2014, recognizing the need for a deeper understanding of how technology-mediated collectives generate value, I commissioned a special issue on “Collaboration and Value Creation in Online Communities,” with a distinguished team of guest editors, Samer Faraj, Georg von Krogh, Karim Lakhani, and Eric Monteiro. The special issue closed on November 15, 2014. The response has been remarkable: a large number of submissions have been received and are currently being processed, bearing testimony to the importance of the topic.
As digitization continues its inexorable march and generates benefits and value for society and enterprises, it can equally be an agent of unanticipated, adverse outcomes, creating risks and susceptibilities that were beyond the realm of imagination just a few years ago. To better understand the nature of these risks and generate new knowledge about risk mitigation, a second special issue, “Ubiquitous IT and Digital Vulnerabilities” was announced in 2014, with an editorial team of Rob Fichman, Ram Gopal, Alok Gupta, and Sam Ransbotham. If you are working in this area, I encourage you to submit your research to this special issue!
Editorial Transitions
ISR’s editorial board provides invaluable service to the community. We must recognize that editors contribute significant time and effort in working with authors to move their research to the next level of excellence and impact. Annually, we acknowledge the contributions of editors who are rotating off of the board and welcome new appointees who have distinguished themselves as scholars and mentors. In addition to the research accomplishments of colleagues, editorial appointments are made with a variety of considerations in mind, including the journal's mission, its international scope, and adequate representation across the multitude of topics, genres, epistemological stances, and methodologies that characterize scholarship in the IS field.
Three senior editors are rotating off of the board after completing their terms: Samer Faraj (McGill University), Mark Keil (Georgia State University), and Rahul Telang (Carnegie-Mellon University). Thank you for all your contributions to ISR! I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of our retiring associate editors: Eric Zheng (University of Texas at Dallas), Kai-Lung Hui (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Kenny Cheng (University of Florida), Sandeep Purao (Pennsylvania State University), Sudip Bhattacharjee (University of Connecticut), Ming Fan (University of Washington), Alberto Espinosa (American University), and Vijay Khatri (Indiana University).
I am pleased to announce the appointment of four new senior editors, Saby Mitra (Georgia Institute of Technology), Kai-Lung Hui (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Dorothy Leidner (Baylor University), and Ola Henfridsson (University of Warwick). Seven new associate editors join the ISR team: Ahmed Abbasi (University of Virginia), Animesh Animesh (McGill University), Hillol Bala (Indiana University), Wendy Duan (George Washington University), Walter Fernandez (University of New South Wales), Deepa Mani (Indian School of Business), and Prasanna Tambe (New York University). Collectively, the new senior editors and associate editors possess a wealth of domain and methodological expertise across all of the research area that IS scholars work~in. Welcome aboard!
Kudos to Excellence
Each year ISR acknowledges the exceptional performance and contributions of authors, reviewers and editorial board members through awards presented at the ISR reception held at INFORMS. These include the Best Published Paper award, Best Reviewer award, and the Best Associate Editor awards. The winners for 2013 are:
Reviewers of the Year 2013
Wenjing (Wendy) Duan, George Washington University
Nachiketa Sahoo, Boston University
Associate Editors of the Year 2013
De Liu, University of Minnesota
Jonathon Cummings, Duke University
Best Paper Awards for 2013
Lynn Wu (2013) Social network effects on productivity and job security: Evidence from the adoption of a social networking tool. Information Systems Research 24(1):30–51.
Gordon Burtch, Anindya Ghose, Sunil Wattal (2013) An empirical examination of the antecedents and consequences of contribution patterns in crowd-funded markets. Information Systems Research 24(3):499–519.
Runner-Up
Andrew Burton-Jones, Camille Grange (2013) From use to effective use: A representation theory perspective. Information Systems Research 24(3):632–658.
Runner-Up
Andrew Burton-Jones, Camille Grange (2013) From use to effective use: A representation theory perspective. Information Systems Research 24(3):632–658.
Editorial Policy Changes for 2015
ISR seeks to publish research that, in addition to addressing important scholarly problems in the IS discipline with rigor, is also innovative and has the potential to be high impact. A small number of editorial policy changes will go into effect starting January 2015. First, the maximum number of pages for research notes has been reduced to 20 pages. This will allow the journal to expand the number of papers that can be published while maintaining high standards for quality. Authors are encouraged to visit the journal’s website for more details. Second and consistent with the trend at most major journals to allow for replication of research results, authors will be required to submit a data disclosure policy with their papers.
