The European Information Systems Academy

In this issue, we have three papers that provide complimentary accounts on the European Information Systems Academy. Two of the papers are on separate analyses of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), and the third examines the dominant North American view of IS scholarship and uses European scholarly journals to show the benefits of a more inclusive approach to IS scholarship.

Considerable attention has been paid over the years in the literature to an analysis of the relative standing of Information Systems journals, and citation patterns. For example, starting with Mary Culnan's (1986) co-citation analysis right up to more recent analyses such as that by Chen & Hirschheim (2004), which considered paradigmatic and methodological issues, we have been provided with rich accounts of the Information Systems research community. However, and as pointed out by Galliers & Meadows (2003), much of this analysis has been focused on the North American tradition. There is much less known regarding Information Systems research in Europe – the work of Avgerou and colleagues being an exception (Avgerou et al., 1999). This special section fills this gap by publishing three papers, two of which help in the development of a profile of the European Information Systems Academy. The first, of these by Bob Galliers and Edgar Whitley, considers the first 10 years of ECIS and provides data concerning ECIS authors, their institutions, research topics and citation patterns. Particular attention is drawn to the greater use made by European authors of social theories, than is certainly the case in North America. The paper also provides a useful historical context to the establishment of ECIS, and indeed, the European Journal of Information Systems.

The second profile paper is by Richard Vidgen, Stephan Henneberg and Peter Naudé. While also focusing on ECIS, their approach is different in that they examine patterns based on co-authorship, in relation to the research papers presented at ECIS over the years, and conference panel membership. Using social network analysis (SNA), which has its roots in sociology and anthropology (Degenne & Forse, 1994; Wasserman & Faust, 1994) as their analytical lens, they highlight the wide network of co-authorship associated with ECIS research papers, in contrast to the greater social cohesion associated with the ECIS panels network. Their analysis concludes with a discussion of the range of possible interventions that might aid the continued development of the ECIS community, and also reflects on the utility of SNA in support of Information Systems research. Taken together, the two papers provide a fascinating account of what characterizes the European Information Systems research community, in contrast to other traditions elsewhere in the world.

If the first two papers take a European view that looks out at the world, then the third paper by Michael Gallivan and Raquel Benbunan-Fich takes the dominant global view (North American) and uses this to look into the European World. Taking a paper purporting to produce a list of the top 30 IS scholars (Huang & Hsu, 2005), the paper shows that the derivation of the set of journals used in the process excludes European scholarly IS journals, in particular. Taking a more balanced set of IS scholarly journals they produce a Top 32 list of IS scholars. The Top 30 list of Huang & Hsu (2005) includes two women and four non-North Americans (from Hong Kong and Singapore), whereas with the inclusion of four European IS scholarly journals, Gallivan and Benbunan-Fich's Top 32 list has four women and nine non-North Americans (four from Europe and five from Hong-Kong and Singapore).

In addition to presenting different aspects of the profile of the European Information Systems community, these papers also help open up the consideration of refereed conferences as a topic for research. Whilst for journals, their networks and citations are the most common form of analysis of the state of the field, in recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of information systems conferences. For example, Matthew Jones (2000) looks at the changing use of social theory within the IFIP 8.2 conferences and Chan et al. (2006) and Xu & Chau (2006) focus specifically on the International Conference on Information Systems. Because of the shorter review cycles for conferences, new classic texts and papers can appear in conference proceedings well before they appear in journals, and evidence of this trend is found in the paper by Galliers and Whitley. Similarly, conference features, such as the panels, can explicitly be used to create new forms of collaboration and engagement by bringing together researchers with very different perspectives in a single session, thus providing different linkages between individuals than would be found in terms of journal article co-authorship. The paper by Vidgen et al. highlights some of these features of ECIS as a conference. Gallivan and Benbunan-Fich in contrast make a case for considering journal articles to the exclusion of book reviews etc.

The papers in this issue therefore highlight both the particularities of ECIS as a proxy for understanding the profile of information systems research in Europe and ECIS as a proxy for understanding the characteristics of conferences in comparison to journals. A view of where European IS scholarly work fits in a more inclusive global look at IS scholarship is also looked at.

Ray Paul's European Journal of Information Systems Editor's view: These papers in this special section also provide an impetus to potential further research on this topic. Is IS scholarly activity different in different regions of the world, and if so, why would this be? Does the increasing drive to assess, quality assure, benchmark, appraise, evaluate etc. drive all scholarly publication into a narrow insular academic straightjacket, or can the diversity of views and approaches be maintained or even increased for the health of IS as a subject. After all, the real-world application of IS is in a commercially driven market currently driven by change and choice? Will the Academic Academy be working in a fantasy IS world increasingly divorced from practice? The European Journal of Information Systems welcomes contributions to a discussion of the relevance of IS scholarship to practice.