Loose Change

European Journal of Information Systems (2010) 19, 379–381. doi:10.1057/ejis.2010.40 In this issue of the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), we have a Special Section on I.S. in Interorganizational Networks and four more Opinion papers. The papers in I.S. in Interorganizational Networks were edited by Diederik W. van Liere, Peter H.M. Vervest, Benn Konsynski and Chris Holland. Thanks to all the Guest Editors, who have also written a long and comprehensive editorial for their Special papers. Therefore, I will not cover the Special papers in my Editorial, but will concentrate on the Opinion papers. It is 3 years to the issue when EJIS first started publishing Opinion papers in small collections of papers (in issue 16.4). At that time, I was writing quite a few editorials in my role as Editor-in-Chief, all of which were themed around the concept of change. I am pleased to be given the opportunity to write the editorial for this set of Opinion papers, even though the contents of the papers differ widely, or to put it another way, they are loosely connected. Consequently, I have decided to rise to the challenge of the authors of the published papers, and respond to their opinions by loosely responding with my opinions. So for the two reasons given in this paragraph, the editorial is named ‘Loose Change’ (Loose Change is an English expression that refers to small amounts of coins of low value. I hope I achieve more than that!). The first Opinion paper is by Mark Somers whose paper Using the Theory of the Professions to Understand the IS Identity Crisis uses our understanding of the Professions to illustrate where we are in I.S. in terms of normal professional development, and warns that there are certain essentials lacking at the moment (such as an agreed body of knowledge to convey to would-be practitioners and academics; value consensus (what are the important research questions); an integrated identity that melds academic I.S. with I.S. practice etc.).