Distribution, ranking and reviewing information
Journal of the Association of Information Systems (JAIS) distribution and readership information
JAIS enjoys wide and extensive readership and large visibility in the global IS community. It is accessible to over 4500 members of AIS worldwide. Being an electronic journal we have accurate information on the size of the readership and its access patterns, and the geographical distribution of our patrons. During 2005 JAIS website received on average c.a. 600 visits by day and on average 18 000 visits per month. The number of visitors has been growing by 20% since 2005 of this year. The most popular articles reach over 1000 downloads/year. The reach of JAIS readership is global and covers most countries and areas in the world. Though U.S. dominates access statistics and downloads accounting for c.a. 70% of the visits JAIS enjoys significant interest in Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom, China, Malaysia, Singapore among others.
JAIS indexing information
JAIS is currently indexed in:
Science Citation Index Expanded
Social Sciences Citation Index
Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences
ISI Alerting Services
EPSCOT
ULRICHS
ABI/INFORM
JAIS Ranking information
JAIS has a strong reputation of publishing high quality theory focused articles in Information Systems field as testified by the rapidly increased rankings. The number of submissions, the number of published articles and the number of readers have been marked by a steady growth during the past five so that in all respects JAIS qualifies as an A level journal.
Many leading departments and published rankings in the IS field rank JAIS as an “A” outlet. JAIS editorial team did in May 2006 a survey among its editorial board members on how JAIS is ranked among IS journals in their home department or school, and if it is ranked, how ranks are being used. The responses cover all parts of the globe. The responses show a strong position of JAIS as a high quality academic outlet. In schools and departments which separate A+ and A journals and define a small select group of elite journals JAIS was mentioned in little less than 20% of responses in the elite category. Other journals in this rank were MISQ, ISR, JMIS and Management Science in the order of frequency (both MISQ and ISR were included in all four lists) about 40% listed JAIS as an A outlet along other journals. These schools often mentioned that JAIS was ranked "a notch" below MISQ and ISR. Several schools (c.a. 30%) in this group mentioned that their plans were to move JAIS up in the coming years to A+ rank, if it is indexed in ISI (as is done in 2007). Overall, c.a. 70% of the departments or schools ranked JAIS as A+ or A journal and in no ranking was JAIS ranked below B.
When JAIS was not included in the official ranking (c.a. 30% of responses), it was because some schools only recognized Financial Times rankings. Over 30% of these remaining schools did not rank JAIS, as it was not indexed by ISI at the time of survey, but in-officially ranked JAIS as A- or B. The recent decision to index JAIS in ISI makes these schools to recognize JAIS as A- or A journal. The remaining schools (c.a. 10 %) did not have official rankings for other journals than ISR or MISQ or their top "5" but they expected JAIS to move up in their rankings in the future when JAIS is indexed. Overall, these results show a strong and growing consensus among the leading schools that they regard JAIS as a major A outlet in the IS field with a growing international recognition.
Anne-Wil Harzing (https://www.harzing.com/jql.htm) aggregates multiple measures on quality for academic journals in the field of business. In this ranking JAIS is included and is currently rated as B on the Wien Journal Rating 2001, A according to the Association of Professors of Mgmt in German speaking countries, and 3rd with the Cranfield University School of Management. Overall, JAIS fares well in rankings, if one takes into account the age of the journal (see http://www.aisworld.org/csaunders/rankings.htm). There are, however, several caveats before taking these rankings at face value, as they use a variety of ranking methods which all have their weaknesses including self selection and sampling bias, unclear criteria in actually defining the ranks, and lack of real information among rankers to generate reliable ranks. Even impact factor based rankings have several weaknesses as citations are carried out for several purposes and the citation patterns vary even within the disciplines (See Seglen, P. O. (1997). "Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research." British Medical Journal 314(Feb 15): 498-502.
Several critical factors have affected improved rankings for JAIS including interesting articles and new topics, very low acceptance rates, the quality and academic weight of the editorial board, and the quality and thoroughness of reviewing. In all these criteria JAIS meets the expectations for an A level outlet. In recent years JAIS has been nimble in responding to intellectual needs within the community as its publications on digital divide, TAM special issue, or the section on research perspectives testify. The acceptance rate of JAIS has been less than 12% over the last 3 years which is on a par with other major outlets in the field. JAIS submissions have been growing at the rate of 30-40% per year and are currently at the level, which enables us to sustain publishing high quality articles in a steady flow. JAIS received nearly 200 submissions in 2006. The editorial board is composed of world class scholars who cover all fields of information systems and have extensive editorial experience. Some recent studies that have used reputations of departments or the impact factors of editorial boards as ranking criteria recognize JAIS editorial board to be on a par with MISQ and ISR. The review policies in JAIS are similar to those followed in other top level journals and we seek to promote bold and rigorous scholarship through our review processes.
JAIS Reviewing principles and information
Active scholarship requires a broader perspective on peer review and its place in scholarly enterprise. This issue has been raised within the IS field: there was a panel on reviewing at the last ICIS meeting. It is also under discussion in the broader realm of scholarship, as seen in a recent Science article, "Is peer review broken?" (20 (2), 2006). Journal submissions are increasing across disciplines, with some journals receiving staggering numbers each year, such as 6000 at JAMA and 12000 at Science. Naturally, the number of reviews being done is increasing as well. At the same time, reviewing appears to be increasingly political and error prone. Reviewers are more likely to accept work that cites their own work, yet journal editors do not consistently check on possible conflicts of interest. Some studies show acceptance for publication of papers with only 37 % agreement among reviewers, suggesting political or other motives for acceptance. Studies show reviewer failure to recognize common errors and other problems in manuscripts: experiments have shown reviewers catching an average of only one-quarter to one-third of errors introduced deliberately into a manuscript. Reviewers tend to accept only statistically significant results that reject the null hypothesis, and they tend to reject replication studies that cannot replicate previously published results, exacerbating the so-called "file drawer problem" in which authors submit only their significant findings while leaving their non-significant findings in the file drawers. It is fair to wonder whether peer review is not just a lottery.
This situation frustrates diligent authors. Good work is rejected, and the quality of published articles fails to rise despite increasing submissions and long review cycles. Technically "sound" but intellectually boring papers are published, while truly interesting work is weeded out. Findings and conclusions in many published papers are overstated, while limitations of the research are brushed aside. This dismal situation is difficult to explain: it probably has something to do with the pernicious effect of rankings systems on tenure and promotion committee assessments. On one hand, the IS field can feel good that it is not alone in this nasty situation, but on the other hand, the situation truly is nasty. It is important to note that this situation is not the result of deliberate action to make the peer review process work poorly. Thousands of editors and reviewers work hard to improve the intellectual sharpness and soundness of submitted papers, and ensure that bold and interesting scholarship is published. This is an ecological problem, with many complicated dimensions.
The JAIS community cannot address all the dimensions of this ecological problem, but it can adjust how it operates its own review system to serve the IS community in the best way. JAIS starts with the conclusion that the peer review system, for all its faults, is the best mechanism available to ensure quality. In addition, it makes more sense to fix the problems that can be addressed right away, and leave the more challenging issues for later. A good way to begin is to re-frame the purpose of the peer review process in a more realistic way than has been the case in the recent past.
Peer review as practiced today emerged from open dialogues and debates that followed paper "readings" in 18th century scientific society meetings. Members stood and read their papers aloud, and their colleagues responded with debate and criticism from the floor. Revisions, refinement and rebuttals took place in real time, and a revised paper usually showed up subsequently in print. As printed scientific journals became more prominent and meetings were supplemented by communication at a distance, papers were circulated and written comments and rebuttals were provided to the author before the publication. This evolved into to the current journal review system. In both models, the essential element is the discussion of the ideas, not the suppression of incomplete work. In fact, the whole purpose of the exercise is to keep useful scholarship going in the right direction. To achieve this, scholars created through the peer reviewed journal process an invisible Peircean community of inquiry in which people learn from one another, and revise and refine their thought as a result. JAIS follows this principle by advocating developmental reviews. The process is as follows: The process starts when a Senior Editor screens a submission for potential contribution and asks: is this new, is this interesting, is this believable? Many submissions are rejected at this stage, but the SE tries to give authors comments that help them to make their paper stronger. When the SE feels the submission warrants review, an implied commitment is made by the SE to work with the author(s) on the paper to make it publishable. Reviewers are asked to critique the paper, offer constructive comments, and suggest whether the paper is worth of publishing. Reviewers are expected to provide constructive comments for improvement even if the recommendation is to reject the paper. The SE takes these recommendations into account when responding to the author(s). If the paper is revised and returned, the process might go through one more round of review, although normally it will not go more than two rounds before a conclusion is reached to reject or publish the paper. The goal of the review process is to recognize the potential contribution of the submission as quickly as possible, and to work with the author(s) to make the final product as good as it can be, whether published in JAIS or elsewhere.