Predicting the effect of change can be difficult if not impossible. A year ago in the first editorial of Volume 15, I stated ‘because special issues are on the increase, this reduces the pool of papers available for general submission, …’ and ‘… dilution of the general stream of submissions with the removal of good papers to the special issues should end up with less good papers for general issues.’ A reasoned statement, but did it turn out to be reasonable? The European Journal of Information Systems published a special issue or a special contents section in every one of its six issues last year, as predicted in that first editorial. And it is likely to do the same this year. But we also published 16 general papers in the sequence (0, 2, 3, 4, 0, 7 papers in each issue respectively). In my last Editorial of 2004 in the fourth issue, I tabulated the number of papers published in the four issue volumes for the years 2000–2004. The number of papers in each volume seems higher, but it includes special issue papers. Counting just the number of general papers on their own gives the results shown in .
Table 1 Some data concerning the publication of the European Journal of Information Systems for the last 7 years/volumes
So I was wrong a year ago, the flow of general papers has been fairly stable for seven years, and the flow of special issues, special sections and other special contents accounts largely for the increased number of pages published in the last few years. How do I account for this in the light of experience? I guess journal publishing is like road building, as you increase the capacity, traffic increases to match the increase. And like traffic, the flow of materials is improving in quality all the time, with improving quality control ensuring this improving quality.
In this issue of the European Journal of Information Systems, we have four general papers and a special section on the European Information Systems Academy. General papers still flowing as before. But the special section is another example of how change strikes back, in a story, which I have entitled:
When 1+1 might equal any number between 0 and 4
The two special section papers by Galliers and Whitley and by Vidgen et al. in this issue were submitted to the European Journal of Information Systems as independent general papers. During the review process, it became apparent that we had two papers concerning the European IS Academy and that this might offer the opportunity to either
| 1. | = | Amalgamate the two papers into one. Hence, 1+1=1. |
| 2. | = | Rewrite the two papers to theme them better into a special section and add an editorial. Hence, 1+1=3. |
| 3. | = | No change. Hence, 1+1=2. |
Such an offer could have offended the authors and so we faced the prospect of:
| 4. | = | One paper being withdrawn. Hence, 1+1=1. |
| 5. | = | Both papers being withdrawn. Hence, 1+1=0. |
What was unforeseen at this stage was the arrival of yet another paper, by Gallivan and Benbunan-Fich, which also fitted the special section theme very well. So at the last minute:
| 6. | = | Adding the new paper to the newly created special section. Hence, 1+1=4. |
Which is where we have ended up. We offered change to improve the quality of the work to be published, risking losing one or both papers, and change struck back and we ended up with an excellent special section of papers that was unpredictable at the outset of the proposed change. So what does all this say about predicting change? I think I can safely predict that change will strike back!