In my editorial in the first issue of this year's volume of the European Journal of Information Systems, I introduced two changes. The first was to move to six issues a year because as I said ‘the continuing success of the journal enables us to offer our readers increases in both the quality and number of papers’. The second change was that more material would appear in special issues or sections, which would present quality articles brought together by dedicated specialists in the topic.
So, did we make the changes?
This, the sixth and final issue of the 2006 Volume of the European Journal of Information Systems has over 100 pages more than last year's Volume 14, which itself was a special Volume with five issues instead of the regular four per volume previously. We have had no problem filling six issues with quality material; in fact we have gone nearly 10% over target on published pages even though the target itself was raised 20% over last year. The following table shows more clearly the changing impact of the European Journal of Information Systems in terms of volume of material published. So we made this change as can be seen.
And what of the second change on special issues and sections? Two issues have been special issues and four issues have contained special sections, so every issue has had some guest specialist edited material in it. In this issue, we have the Special Section on Evolving Research on Enterprise Content Management. This is an appropriate point to thank all our guest editors this year who have done a magnificent job for the European Journal of Information Systems. We have also published 16 regular articles and two Editor's Views papers. So we made this change as also can be seen.
But, in successfully making these changes, what can one say about the quality of the European Journal of Information Systems? I would like to think we are in a virtuous circle of success. Certainly more special issue topics are being proposed to us presumably because of the ‘success’ of what we have published so far. Subscriptions to the journal continue to rise against the general trend of a falling market. The impact factor of the journal rose again this year. We continue to do well in journal rankings. But I am mindful of the following quote
‘Recall Chou En-lai's response, when asked to assess the results of the French Revolution: it is too soon to tell.’
(http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol11num3/special/krygier.html)
My view is that quality can be improved without limit, even though it is difficult to know the impact for some time. So, while in some narrow sense the journal has succeeded in ‘Making the Changes’, the task of improving the quality of the journal requires us to continue with the task of ‘Making the Changes’ indefinitely to maintain quality improvement. Thinking change is ever complete is a dangerous view. I have heard many good things about the journal this year, and some not so good. Thank you for all your feedback. We have endeavoured to take it on board whatever its nature. Please keep telling us what you think so that we continue to meet your expectations of us as we continue making the changes.