Research Importance in the Information Systems Field: A Citation Analysis

摘要

IS research can serve two goals: improve practice or make a research contribution. Since the early days of the Information Systems (IS) discipline, researchers have criticized the limited practical relevance of their work. In the case of research contributions, new research typically builds on important prior research. This study investigates the phenomenon of research importance in IS, using citations as proxy for research importance. The paper analyzes citations to 1,178 papers published in six peer-reviewed IS journals between 1996 and 2005. The study finds that, based on citations, only few papers show measurable research importance. The paper concludes with a discussion of the factors that may account for this finding and closes with a proposed solution to address the issue.