Time for Some Changes to ICIS? Reflections on our Highest Quality Conference

Abstract

In this commentary, we reflect on the program chair experience of ICIS 2015 to pass on some useful organizational memory for the IS community at large. We also reflect on volunteer effort required for a high-quality conference and the challenges of maintaining quality over a diverse and dispersed reviewing effort. We ask whether we can count on this volunteer effort in a changing higher education context where universities value volunteer effort or service less than promotion and tenure. We make several wide-ranging recommendations to preserve organizational memory and ensure the ongoing excellence of ICIS. Finally, we elaborate on some hard questions about whether the current conference model is fit for purpose and consider alternative models for our high-quality conference.

ICIS 2017 Panel Report: Break Your Shackles! Emancipating Information Systems from the Tyranny of Peer Review

“…Knowing the answer can also reveal viable and unviable solutions. For example, ICIS requires approximately 2,500 reviewers and editors every year (Urquhart, Carte, & Heinzl, 2017)-substantially more people than actually attend the conference. Clearly, the conference cannot sustain this review model, and, therefore, we need to address the problem at the institutional level and not through (for example) exhorting some scholars to do more reviews.…”

“…Further, our discipline's focus on rigor in the review process may unwittingly stifle innovative ideas. As an example, the International Conference on Information Systems has an acceptance rate of 25 to 30 percent (Urquhart et al, 2017), a rate comparable to many journals. Because ICIS publishes papers in its proceedings, publication of the same work becomes somewhat more complex for authors.…”

ish Stocks, Grazing Land, and Reviewers: Exploring the Usefulness of the Tragedy of the Commons for Understanding the Reviewer Resource Problem

“…Fish stocks, grazing land and reviewers: exploring the usefulness of the tragedy of the commons for understanding the reviewer resource problem Edgar A. Whitley Department of Management London School of Economics and Political Science United Kingdom e.a.whitley@lse.ac.uk Thomas Stafford's timely piece (2018) will resonate with anyone who has struggled to find qualified reviewers, whether for a journal or a conference (e.g. Urquhart et al 2017). Effective peer review processes uphold the integrity of journals and conferences as well as the quality of the individual articles published in them (cf Safi 2014).…”

“…Similarly, our leading conferences need to handle large (and growing) numbers of submissions. For example, Urquhart et al (2017) note that ICIS 2015 received 1198 submissions. The scale of the review process immediately becomes apparent.…”

“…For example, in smaller conferences and journal special issues there has been an expectation that submitting authors would act as the primary reviewers for other submissions. The scale (and review management systems (cf Urquhart et al 2017)) means that it was possible to identify individuals who were acting as free-riders and intervene using social pressures.…”