AIS Transactions on Replication Research

Information for Authors

TRR publishes empirical replications of prior research. It does not publish research that focuses on unexplored research questions. From time to time, we may publish Issues and Opinions articles that provide commentary on replication research, but these will be rare. If you are interested in submitting an Issues and Opinions paper, please contact one of the Editors-in-Chief to discuss the paper before beginning to write it.

Authors are strongly encouraged to read our founding editorial that argues for the importance of replication. It is available at http://aisel.aisnet.org/trr/vol1/iss1/.

Our focus is Information Systems research, so we will only consider replications of Information Systems articles.

In general, TRR aims to publish three types of replications:

Exact Replications: These articles are exact copies of the original article in terms of method and context. All measures, treatments statistical analyses, etc. will be identical to those of the original study. The context will also be the same, so if the original study used US undergraduate business students, Mechanical Turk, employees of a Finnish telecom, etc., so too will an exact replication study.
Methodological Replications: These articles use exactly the same methods as the original study (i.e., measures, treatments, statistics etc.) but are conducted in a different context. For example, if the original study used US undergraduate business students, the replication might use US graduate students, undergraduates from Hong Kong, US professionals, and so on.
Conceptual Replications: These articles test exactly the same research questions or hypotheses, but use different measures, treatments, and/or analyses. For example, replications might alter the wording of items used to measure key constructs or use different software to implement a treatment in an experiment. Likewise, studies that attempt to test the boundaries of the theory and the strength of a relationship using explained variance and effect sizes are particularly welcomed.

Conceptual replications are the strongest form of replication because they ensure that there is nothing idiosyncratic about the wording of items, the execution of treatments, or the culture of the original context that would limit the research conclusions. TRR is open to all forms of replication, but we are particularly interested in conceptual replications.

Manuscript Length

TRR does not have restrictions on length because as an electronic journal it does not have page limits. However, all manuscripts should be written concisely Overly long papers will not likely be viewed well by the review team and the readers. In general, papers should be 15-20 pages or less (excluding abstract, tables, figures, appendices, and references).

Format Requirements

All submissions (new manuscripts or revisions) should be prepared with MS Word or OpenDocument format (ODF).

Elements of a New Manuscript

The main manuscript document should contain the following items in one file: title, abstract, text with tables and figures, references, and appendices.

The title should include an allusion to the original article, by, for example, repeating some part of the original article’s title. The title should not include a citation to the study being replicated (e.g., Smith, et al., 2013). The abstract should cite the original study in the first sentence and then explain the nature of the replication (exact, methodological, or conceptual). It should compare the results from the replication to the original study and summarize conclusions for future research.

The body of the manuscript should begin with an Introduction that briefly situates the original study and the replication study. It should articulate why the original article is important and why the replication study is needed. The research questions and/or hypotheses should be stated, along with the findings of the original study and any prior replications. Tables and/or figures may be helpful. There is no need for a prior theory and research section; this will be provided by the original article.

The Method section should clearly explain the methods in such detail that other researchers could execute the replication without contacting the authors. It may be useful to follow the structure of the Methods section in the original article. Appendices may be used to provide details of measures, treatments, etc.

The Results section should present the results and contrast them with the original study.

The Discussion section should draw implications for future research based on the replication’s results and the results of the original study and other replications.

Author information, manuscript category, keywords, nominations for the review team, and other relevant information such as prior versions being presented at conferences should be provided during online submission. Authors are encouraged to request a specific Senior Editor and to provide names and contact information of two potential reviewers at the time of submission.

Revised Manuscript

The main manuscript document should be formatted in the same manner as the original submission.

There should be a separate response to reviews document, in which the authors should address all the comments from the review team point by point with reference to page numbers in the revised document. If authors disagree with specific comments or suggestions, they should present arguments for why they disagree.

Tables and Figures

They should be inserted in the text close to the places they are first introduced, and labeled clearly with captions.

Manuscript Layout

Title: centered, Arial 16, bold.
Heading 1: Arial 14, bold.
Heading 2: Arial 12, bold.
Heading 3: Arial 12, italic.
Body text: Times New Roman, 12 point, left justified.
Table captions: before the tables, centered.
Figure captions: after the figures, centered.
Line space: double.
Margins: 1 inch around (all items including body text, tables, figures, etc. must fit within these margins).
No indent, use an empty line to separate paragraphs.
Page number: in the right bottom.
Footnotes: referred to by superscript number, and displayed on the same page as referred in text. Use Times New Roman 10 points, single spaced.
Endnotes: not preferred.

Reference Style

TRR uses the JAIS reference style. When making a reference within text, use the JAIS style as noted in the EndNote style sheet. Specifically,

Single author: (Benbasat, 2001)
Two Authors: (Zhang and Galletta, 2007)
More authors: (Gray et al., 2001)
Same author but more than one article in a year: (Galletta, 2005a), (Galletta, 2005b)

Manuscript Submission

All submissions to TRR should be made through the manuscript central review system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ais-trr) hosted by ScholarOne. Authors need to login with their Manuscript Central ID and Password. Note: such login information is identical among JAIS, CAIS and TRR manuscript review systems. So if you already have an account with any of these journals, you just need to use the login information with that account to log in to another journal. If you do not have one, you can create one at the website. The default roles for each new account are Author and Reviewer.

Submitting New Manuscripts

Once in the system, go to Author Center, then go to "Click here to submit a new manuscript", and follow the flow of submission.

Submitting Revisions

When submitting a revision, authors should go to Author Center, click "Manuscripts with Decisions" to find the last version of the revision, then click "Create a revision".

Submitting Resubmissions

When submitting a resubmission (that is, the original manuscript received a "Decline but Invite Resubmission decision"), the authors should go to Author Center, then “Click here to submit a new manuscript.” During the submission, when asked whether the manuscript has been submitted previously, answer Yes, then give the original submission’s ID.

Best Paper Award

Papers published in TRR will be considered for the annual best paper award. To avoid potential conflict of interest, papers authored by EICs are excluded for being considered for the best paper awards. TRR’s annual best paper will be nominated for the annual Senior Scholars Best Paper Award.

Fee for Submitting and Publishing

If one or more authors are members of AIS, there is no fee for submitting a manuscript to TRR for review or for publishing a paper in TRR. As required by AIS policy, there are fees for publication if no authors are AIS members at the time of acceptance.

Code of Research Conduct

All authors must adhere to the AIS Code of Research Conduct (http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3220&context=cais) in their work. Authors who believe their work has been plagiarized or subjected to other scholarly misconduct are urged to consult Guidelines for a Victim (http://aisnet.org/?GuidelinesforVictim). AIS Council's process for dealing with allegations of scholarly misconduct in the Association's journals and proceedings is detailed in AIS Research Conduct Committee Process Guidelines (http://aisnet.org/?AISResearchCommittee).

Copyright

When submitting an article to any AIS journal, the authors certify that they own the copyright of the article. Copyright to all articles published by AIS journals must be transferred by the authors to AIS prior to publication. All authors of an accepted paper will be required to fill out and sign a form to this effect. Electronic or print copies of the published article may be made for non-commercial, personal or class-room use. In cases of classroom copies, copyright should be attributed to AIS on each copy. Authors may include a copy of their article on their Web page as long as it is clearly noted that AIS owns the copyright and that use for profit is not allowed. Such an author version must be identical to the final published version, and include a link to the AIS journal in which the paper appears.

Sample of Copyright Release form

Openness

TRR is a signatory of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines of the Center for Open Science (COS). Please see the Summary Table of Top Guidelines for more information.

The following explains how TRR implements the TOP guidelines

TOP Guideline	TOP Level	Explanation
Citation Standards	Level III	All data and materials drawn from other sources must be properly cited in the paper.
Data Transparency	Level I	We encourage authors to publish their data as a separate article in TRR, but this is not required. Authors must state in their cover letter whether they intend to publish their data upon acceptance or not.
Analytic Methods Transparency	Level I	Authors must state in their cover letter whether they intend to publish their source code for analysis and/or data gathering upon acceptance or not. If authors choose to publish their source code, they should provide the link to its location.
Research Materials Transparency	Level II	We require open materials. Authors must submit their materials which will be published as a separate article upon acceptance of their replication article.
Design and Analysis Transparency	Level III	All research design and analysis details must be properly described in the article.
Preregistration of Studies	Level 0	We have no policy for the preregistration of studies.
Preregistration of Analysis Plans	Level 0	We have no policy for the preregistration of analysis plans.
Replication	Level I	We require results to review a paper, but we are results agnostic; the results play no role in the accept/reject decision.