state of research in IS: Current streams, The

Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 2003 by Stohr, Ted, Tuunainen, V K, Peffers, Ken

Researchers who attend focused research workshops and small conferences are often aware of major research efforts years before the papers are published in journals. Unfortunately for the rest of us who haven't attended a particular workshop, it is quite difficult to access, sometimes even to be aware of, the information that the participants got. We're often, consequently, entirely unaware of interesting research in progress until it actually appears in print, years later. This is also unfortunate for the workshop participants, as they miss out on potential benefits that a wide audience to their ongoing research would bring, such as potential new collaborators, shared ideas, suggestions about literature, and opportunities to share the excitement of the research.

Ordinary review papers, such as those published in traditional IS journals, don't address these needs. Such papers generally focus only on published research and, since they're published in traditional journals, they generally appear several years later. Consequently, they usually have little or nothing to say about current research and research in progress.

Here we call for short review papers about the state of contemporary research within focused streams of IS research. These "State-of-Research Review (SORR)" papers would review current and very recent research efforts, including, especially, projects and papers that have not yet been published in research journals. The subject of such a paper might be research efforts that have been presented in a small conference or workshop, that are the focus of formal or informal collaboration by several researchers, or they might simply be non-collaborating, parallel efforts of researchers about which information is collected in the course of a deep review of literature.

SORR papers would review very recently published papers and papers and projects that have not appeared in IS journals. They would describe the current research, putting it into a contextual framework that may include an agenda or inferences about the direction of the research, its value, and applicability to business or society.

The scope for SORR papers can be defined in terms of methodology, theory, industry, reference discipline, problem or any other interesting concept. Such papers can be more or less narrowly focused. For example, at various levels of focus, hypothetical titles in the special issue might include, "The value of experimental research in electronic commerce: a state of research review."

"Simulation experiments for P2P e-commerce research: the state of the research."

The former of these two titles is likely to represent a much wider scope than the latter, which might include only a handful of researchers and papers.

Writing a paper for this special issue has advantage for the researcher and for the IS research community:

1. SORR papers represent additional research output for the researcher. They don't detract from the full research papers that will be published in traditional IS journals one to five years later.

2. These papers provide information to the community about researchers' future output, adding to its value by allowing colleagues to anticipate it and cite it in advance of formal publication.

3. By laying claim to a future stream of research, the reviewed authors can attract new collaborators, draw new researchers into exciting new streams, and extend communities of researchers who might otherwise not know of each other.

SORR papers can be submitted via the "paper submission and review system" at http://jitta.org (it may be advisable to send an email note to one of the special issue editors to call attention to the paper). They will generally be fairly short, i.e. 5000-10,000 words, however, papers of any length will be entertained. They should conform to the requirements of the "instructions to authors," found at http://jitta.org, particularly with respect to including the expected "contribution section." The cover letter should include reference to the special issue and include reviewer nominations.

Prospective authors are welcome to send a short prospectus, describing an idea for a paper to the Editor-in-chief, prior to writing and submitting the paper, however, this is not required.

Target dates:

Completed first articles July 15, 2003 submitted

First articles published August 31, 2003

Deadline for articles November 30, 2003

The review process will be fast. Articles will be published as soon as ready. The special issue may be published in installments. There is no limit to the number of articles that can be published in this special issue.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Ted Stohr, Stevens Institute of Technology

Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management, Morton Building, Room 327, Castle Point on the Hudson, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, USA, Phone: (201)216-8915, Fax: (201) 216-5385, Email: estohr@stevens-tech.edu

V. K. Tuunainen, Helsinki School of Economics

Information Systems Science, P.O. Box 1210, FIN-00101 Helsinki, Finland, Email: tuunaine@hkkk.fi, Phone: 358-9-431 38255, Fax: 358-9-43138700, http; //www.hkkk.fi/~tuunaine