Change strikes back

European Journal of Information Systems (2007) 16, 1–2. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000668 Predicting the effect of change can be difficult if not impossible. A year ago in the first editorial of Volume 15, I stated ‘because special issues are on the increase, this reduces the pool of papers available for general submission, y’ and ‘y dilution of the general stream of submissions with the removal of good papers to the special issues should end up with less good papers for general issues.’ A reasoned statement, but did it turn out to be reasonable? The European Journal of Information Systems published a special issue or a special contents section in every one of its six issues last year, as predicted in that first editorial. And it is likely to do the same this year. But we also published 16 general papers in the sequence (0, 2, 3, 4, 0, 7 papers in each issue respectively). In my last Editorial of 2004 in the fourth issue, I tabulated the number of papers published in the four issue volumes for the years 2000–2004. The number of papers in each volume seems higher, but it includes special issue papers. Counting just the number of general papers on their own gives the results shown in Table 1. So I was wrong a year ago, the flow of general papers has been fairly stable for seven years, and the flow of special issues, special sections and other special contents accounts largely for the increased number of pages published in the last few years. How do I account for this in the light of experience? I guess journal publishing is like road building, as you increase the capacity, traffic increases to match the increase. And like traffic, the flow of materials is improving in quality all the time, with improving quality control ensuring this improving quality. In this issue of the European Journal of Information Systems, we have four general papers and a special section on the European Information Systems Academy. General papers still flowing as before. But the special section is another example of how change strikes back, in a story, which I have entitled: