Communication of MIS Research: an Analysis of Journal Stratification

The stratification among journals constituting the formal communication system for MIS research is described and analyzed on the basis of MIS experts' opinions, published MIS articles, and citation frequency. Implications of the research results are discussed for authors seeking suitable publication outlets, for academic administrators making promotion decisions, for editors wishing to establish coverage policy, and for librarians making journal acquisition decisions. INTRODUCTION 1. For MIS researchers, it is important to know where to find published MIS As part of the formal communication research and which journals to publish system, journals play an important role·in i n. Because of prestig e the exchange of scientific information. differentiation between journals, long However, the extent to which journals review times, and high rejection rates, communicate information and contribute to MIS researchers must select journals a discipline is affected by journal for submitting manuscripts by a stratification in terms of quality and deliberate and conscious process. prestige. Journal stratification influences the degree to which articles 2. Academic administrators are concerned are noticed, read, used, and cited, and is about prestige differentiation between directly observable in manuscript journals when evaluating research submission decisions of .individual efforts for tenure and promotion researchers and tenure/promotion decisions decisions. of academic administrators. 3. Journal editors and publishers need to In the emerging discipline of MIS, evaluate their performance and communication of research findings has editorial policies for MIS research. been hampered by the poorly defined stratification among the emerging MIS 4. Chief librarians and acquisition journals and established journals in librarians need to set journal related disciplines. There has been a selection policies for the MIS field· lack of consensus on a major MIS journal, several established journals have not been To examine journal stratification, the receptive to MlS research, and journals research approach employed several receptive to MIS often lack prestige and different measures since "no one criterion readership (Keen, 1980). The purpose of used in isolation can give a realistic this study is to demonstrate that indication of the relative importance of stratification exists among those journals journals" (Subramanyan, 1975). A constituting the communication system for journal's contributions to the MIS MIS research and to characterize the discipline provides one means to assess nature of that stratification. journal quality (Hamelman and Mazze, 1974), and also indicatesthe importance Journal stratification is important to of the journal in communicating MIS individual researchers, academic research. The research approach to administrators, journal editors and measure journal contributions involved publishers, and librarians. three steps: