Some Guidelines for the Critical Reviewing of Conceptual Papers

* I am deeply indebted to Heinz Klein for the many discussions we had on critical paper reviewing. His thoughts and ideas significantly helped shape this article. I would also like to thank Kalle Lyytinen, Jeff Parsons, Juhani Iivari, and Frank Land for their numerous comments and suggestions. am often asked about the section; in particular about the kinds of papers that are or are not appropriate, how we decide what is and is not appropriate, and, specifically, how we evaluate the submissions we receive. It is on the last point I would like to offer some thoughts, as evaluating the kinds of submissions we receive is challenging to say the least. But before, I present my thoughts on this; a little background to the section is warranted. The IS Research Perspectives is a special section of JAIS whose overall goal is to publish articles that address critical issues that shape the IS research tradition, carry an underlying message for the field's research mission, and are thought-provoking and insightful. We also welcome controversial and speculative papers as long as they are well argued. Articles should help those in the IS field to come together and reflect upon the community, its organization and mission. While most published articles deal directly with IS research in the broadest sense, we welcome articles that assist the disparate sub-communities of our field to better understand one another: to help overcome what has become a significant " communication deficit. " Like other academic disciplines, IS has been driven both by the dynamics of its own internal academic traditions and external pressures. To paraphrase Banville and Landry (1989), this has resulted in an adhocracy where there is not always a shared, well defined, and common mission. We are divided by different paradigms, different research interests, and different perceptions of what the field should or should not include. We also cannot agree on what the preferred approaches are for developing IS in practice. This in turn has led to the current situation, where one IS research community sees little "relevance" in the research of another, because each subscribes to its own "socially constructed truth." Benign tolerance or indifference is all too common, perhaps, because that is the most that one can expect from different truth communities. Many would no doubt agree that the first challenge IS academics face is to make their research more relevant to each other …