Vive les differences? Developing a profile of European information systems research as a basis for international comparisons

Abstract

The information systems (IS) community is truly international, yet there is often a sense that different elements of the community have different profiles in terms of their research and publication expectations. This paper contributes to this discussion by developing a profile of European IS research that can be used as a basis for international comparisons. It reflects on European research on IS as presented during the first 10 years of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Based on an analysis of all papers published in the ECIS proceedings during the period 1993–2002, the paper presents the key characteristics of the ECIS conferences, together with a profile of European IS research activity as presented at ECIS. In particular, it highlights the key references and sources used by researchers presenting papers at ECIS. It articulates the research areas presented at ECIS and explores the claim that European IS draws more on social theories than elsewhere. Its contribution in presenting a profile of European research in the IS field lies in identifying particular characteristics of the European style of research that can be compared to that undertaken in other parts of the world.

Appendices

Appendix A

Database design and data entry

Figure A1 gives an overview of the database structure.

Figure A1

Database model.

The ECIS Papers table was populated using data from the Endnote library described above. To reduce data entry, the Cited Papers table was also initially populated with data from other Endnote libraries including tables of contents from leading IS journals and conferences (Journal Endnote, 2007). These cited papers were marked to indicate the Common Source that they came from (e.g., ECIS, EJIS, MISQ, etc.).

Data entry into the system was done through a web-based (ASP) interface by a team of Ph.D. and former M.Sc. students and consisted of linking ECIS Papers with Cited Papers. If an ECIS paper cited a paper (or anything else) that was not already listed in the Cited Papers table, then it was necessary to add the paper to the system. To minimise this data entry, only the first author, year and (abbreviated) title was entered. If the paper came from a Common Source this was also indicated in the database. A similar process was implemented for linking ECIS Papers with Institution and again, any new institutions were added to the system when they first arose.

For later years, the process was automated by taking the citation information directly from the pdf files of the proceedings. These were then matched against existing citations in the database – if the citation existed previously then the current paper was linked to the older version, if not the new cited paper and link were added to the database.

Although it should not be necessary to reenter Cited Papers or Institutions into the system, on occasion there was duplication of entries. Any duplicated entries were identified and replaced with a single, unique value. This was particularly the case with the citations taken directly from the pdf files. To address these cases, a ‘link field’ was created to link the various forms of the citations so that they all referred to the same thing. All queries were then based on the count of these link fields.

Institutions were also linked to Country, which was taken as a proxy for nationality of the author (thus a Greek academic based in a Swedish institution when submitting a paper for ECIS would be listed as Swedish for that year for analysis purposes). For each paper, only one instance of an institution would be listed against that paper (thus a paper with three authors from Institution A and two from Institution B would be listed as being linked once to both Institution A and Institution B rather than having three links to Institution A and two to Institution B).

Appendix B

Data checking measures

Top cited items

In order to ensure that the top cited items were accurate, the database was carefully checked to ensure that different versions of the same paper were properly linked to refer to the same thing. So, for example, the Yin book on case studies has existed in various versions and editions. All these were linked together so that the total score for the Yin book is for all editions of the book. Similarly, care was taken when the same item appeared to be listed in two different years or with slightly different spellings. To ensure that nothing was missed, the top cited paper lists were checked to items that had five or more citations. A second query, excluding any papers cited by U.K. authors was done, to make sure lower scoring papers were not lost. Further checking was done to make sure that all the papers in Walstrom & Leonard's (2000) list of citation classics were properly linked, as were the authors in Jones' (2000) list of social theorists.

As the U.K. contributes almost a quarter of papers, the query for the top cited items was run again without any paper with any author from the U.K. The results are given in Table B1. As can be seen, the items in this list match those in the main list (although the rankings are slightly different)

Table a1 Top cited papers not including papers with authors from the UK

Top common sources

For most of the papers, tracking the common source was unproblematic as the database had been preloaded with marked records of all the papers published in these sources. However, the initial design of the database had not appreciated the importance of HBR as a source of materials, and this ‘common source’ had to be added later. Many HBR articles were included in the pdf files added as described above and so, these were easily marked as coming from the HBR common source. Again, care was taken to check the top listed papers to see if they came from the HBR as a common source.

Top papers from common sources

These data were unproblematic as the checks described above under the sections Top cited items and Top common sources in Appendix B had already been undertaken.

MJI papers

As the cited papers are listed by author, identifying the social theorists used was relatively easy, given the list of theorists provided by Jones (2000), Table 2 and Appendix A. While identifying authors for the MJI, checks were also made to ensure that links were accurate.

As LSE and Warwick dominate and are by far the largest institutions in terms of accepted papers, excluding them from the analysis of the MJI lowers it to 0.43, and excluding all papers with an author from the U.K. lowers it to 0.31.

Jones (2000) looks at two measures. The first is the total number of social theorist sources cited in the papers. The second is the citation density, which is defined as the sum of the number of unique social theorists cited in each paper, divided by the total number of papers. Thus a paper citing Latour, Giddens and Beck would contribute three to the total number of social theorist sources cited, and three to the sum of unique social theorists. A second paper, citing two different works by Latour would contribute two to the total number of social theorist sources cited and one to the sum of unique social theorists used.

Appendix C

Detailed Tables C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9, C10 and C11 are given here.