We Need the Open Artefact: Design Science as a Pathway to Open Science in Information Systems Research

Abstract

Design science research (DSR) is facing some significant challenges such as how to make the knowledge and artefacts we create more accessible; exclusion from competitive funding schemes that require open practices; and a potential reproducibility crisis if scholars do not have access to everything needed to repeat past research. To help tackle these challenges we suggest that the community should strongly engage with open science, which has been growing in prominence in other fields in recent years. A review of current DSR literature suggests that researchers have not yet discussed how open science practices can be adopted within the field. Thus, we propose how the concepts of open science, namely open access, open data, open source, and open peer review, can be mapped to a DSR process model. Further, we identify an emerging concept, the open artefact, which provides an opportunity to make artefacts more accessible to practice and scholars. The aim of this paper is to stimulate a discussion amongst researchers about these open science practices in DSR, and whether it is a necessary step forward to keep the pace of the changing academic environment.

How Can I Share My Work? A Review of the Open Access Policies of IS Journals - presented at HICSS 2021

“…For this OA policy review, we've adapted the literature review framework that we applied in our other OS study [6] to fit with searching IS journal websites as opposed to journal articles. We follow four phases: 1.…”

“…No longer are they restricted to the academic paper at the end of a project but can instead increase the output of the work they put in. At the different stages of their project, researchers should ask themselves is this artefact, which we refer to as the open artefact [6] worth making available to the public. For example, when writing a problem statement and research questions, is it worth making this openly available where they can get feedback from their peers to make it a stronger artefact?…”

“…However, as alluded to in the introduction, it is imperative that IS researchers begin to adopt such practices as they are the ones that are going to make the change happen [17]. They can also look to other ways of practicing OA by deciding to submit to OA journals, and also looking at making more elements of their research project artefacts available as open artefacts [6].…”

This Paper Is an Artefact: On Open Science Practices in Design Science Research Using Registered Reports

“…Here we turn to Design Science Research (DSR) as one of the areas that has not seen wide adoption of open science principles and practices so far [4]. DSR is an approach to solve highly complex real world problems -also known as wicked problems -through the systematic development and evaluation of artefacts.…”

“…In doing so, researchers can make these different elements of their review openly available, such as the dataset they used, and the artefacts they created (referred to as an open artefact[4]). This can result in researchers being more transparent about their literature reviews, allowing others to evaluate what was done, replicate the review if they want, and reproduce the same (or similar results), and/or confirm if these results are accurate.…”