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Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems

Editorial

Welcome to the winter issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, which marks the end of the 30th volume of the journal. During the year the editors have discussed the role of the journal in the Scandinavian Information Systems (IS) community and in relation to other IS communities, and this issue is dedicated to reflections about the vision, mission, and position of the journal in Scandinavian information systems research.

The journal has always been actively connected to the IRIS (Information Systems Research in Scandinavia) Association. The Association’s main purpose is to develop and maintain SJIS as well as the IRIS Seminar and the Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS), that take place jointly each year in one of the Scandinavian countries. The IRIS Association is the Scandinavian Chapter of AIS and SJIS is one of seven AIS journals. During 2017 a joint Editorial statement was published in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) that summarized mission statements for all AIS journals, to assist AIS members to identify the most suitable journal for their research*.

During the 2018 IRIS/SCIS conference in Aarhus, Denmark, the editors of SJIS met with the Executive Board for the IRIS Association to discuss the development of the community, its conferences and the journal. We saw a joint need to actively connect the journal to the IRIS and SCIS conferences and to further develop the identity, mission, and scope for the journal. This issue reflects our joint ambition while conveying some of the topics that were discussed.

First, we present a joint editorial about the SJIS Mission, Topical Areas, and Research Approaches, which extends the JAIS statement from 2017. This is followed by a commentary written by SJIS editor Arto Ojala together with Othmar Lehner about The Building Blocks of Academic Writing in the Field of Information Systems. The commentary provides guidance on how to write good academic articles in the field of Information Systems in general and for SJIS specifically. With these two editorials, we hope to better communicate to prospective authors what type of papers the journal specifically welcomes.

The other section of this issue brings up the collaboration between the journal and the IRIS and SCIS conferences. For several years we have invited good conference papers to be developed and published in the journal, but also to publish debate pieces and reflections from the IRIS/SCIS conferences to the winter issue. Debates and reflections should provide examples of contemporary discussions in the community that far too less become documented.

For this issue, two keynote presenters and a number of commenters were invited. Tina Blegind Jensen’s contribution is called Digital Transformation of Work: Reflections from IRIS/SCIS Keynote 2018, and addresses consequences of increased digitalization of work. Digital transformation opens new opportunities for more flexible and mobile work, but also negative aspects such as monitoring and measuring by algorithmic management. Blegind Jensen’s text is commented by Rikke Gaardboe, Jeppe Agger Nielsen, Constance Kampf, and Andrea Carugati who all contribute with aspects that emphasize the need for scholarly debate about digital transformation of work. The second keynote résumé is by Richard Baskerville who in his keynote touched upon his ongoing work on IS development for platforms. Richard Baskerville’s contribution in the SJIS debate section; The Emergence of Design Science Research from Decision Theory, discusses the influence of Herbert A. Simon’s decision theory on design science research. Baskerville argues that Simon independently of his systematic approach to decisions offers valuable guidance to design science inspired IS development by balancing creativity and action. The text is commented by Torben Tambo and Jacob Nørbjerg. Finally, we would like to thank all the authors, reviewers and readers of our journal. We also thank Jacob Nørbjerg who has been production editor. We hope that the coming issues of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems will carry on and develop the vision from the first issue of SJIS in 1989 of “opening a window from the Scandinavian research community to information systems researchers in the rest of the world.”

*Saunders, C. et al. (2017). Goals, Values, and Expectations of the AIS Family of Journals, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, (18:9): 633-647.

Magnus Bergquist, Helle Zinner Henriksen, Arto Ojala, and Polyxeni Vassilakopoulou