Information systems in the age of pandemics: COVID-19 and beyond

1. Introduction

This issue of the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) is a special issue on Business Process Management and Digital Innovation. Guest editors Jan Mendling, Brian Pentland, and Jan Recker, have done a great job in explaining the complementariness of these two approaches (Mendling et al., 2020) and present three articles that vindicate this proposition. However, before leaving the word to the guest editors and special issue authors, we want to take the opportunity to reflect upon an urgent topic and present a recently initiated EJIS initiative.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has changed our world forever. Thousands of people are dying, millions of people are in lockdown, and many businesses will not survive. Although several countries are already lifting some of the restrictions put in place to slow down the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we can expect a continued impact on individuals, organisations and governments for a long time. As scholars in many disciplines around the world are collaborating in a “war” against an invisible enemy, how can information systems scholars contribute to this global effort? While information systems scholars might not be able to solve the crisis directly, we believe that we can provide knowledge and insights that might be helpful in the fight against COVID-19 and, indeed, during future pandemics. To provide an opportunity for information systems scholars to contribute timely knowledge contributions that can help the current COVID-19 situation, EJIS is calling for special communications on Information Systems in the Age of Pandemics (https://bit.ly/3b8EfaG).

These special communications will focus on the design, use and impact of information systems during pandemics such as the current COVID-19 crisis. We welcome all kinds of contributions, both empirical and conceptual, as well as design science research. Studies of individual and organisational responses in terms of new or changed digital practices are of particular interest. Work on digital information infrastructures for crisis management and information modelling approaches to help solve or mitigate pandemics, such as COVID-19, would also be welcome. We furthermore welcome issues and opinion pieces and critical articles that look at the short and potential long-term impacts of newly developed systems on people, organisations and society. For example, will short-term fixes (e.g., monitoring of infected people via an app) lead to a permanent state of surveillance? As individuals, organisations and governments are forced to make quick decisions with far-reaching consequences, what are the longer-term societal implications of these decisions and their resultant digital solutions and practices?

In this editorial, we elaborate further on the thinking behind these special communications and give some further examples of where we believe information systems scholars can contribute.

2. Pandemics and information systems

Given the speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged and disseminated, we believe that information systems researchers can now play a key role. Who would be better suited to critically appraising the extent to which current technologies and use of those technologies can help overcome this crisis in the short term, and also examine how best we can utilise technology to recover in the long term? As the COVID-19 pandemic affects the very nature of life as we know it, there are many themes and research angles that relate to information systems and present opportunities for our researchers to contribute. To provide some food for thought, let us discuss a few of these.

The centrality of information in the COVID-19 disaster: A review of media coverage reveals that it is information and information systems that are fuelling and facilitating our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting a wide range of stakeholders. Data analytics and forecasting underpin government policy and decision making, and it is the ongoing analysis that is providing governments with information as to the efficacy and impact of these policies and decisions. People have seen their lives fundamentally change overnight. The general public has now become amateur data scientists consuming endless analyses, summaries and graphs as a source of solace and comfort. People need to make sense of the unfolding pandemic and to understand the impact it may have on them, their livelihood, their family and friends. Almost everyone is familiar with some variant of infection and death rate visualisation, and the constant strive to “flatten the curve”. Information in various, crude and often rudimentary forms is what businesses and financial institutions are using to make some sense of the new climate and liquid context that each finds themselves in. Information systems can contribute to all of these areas by examining the specific role of information and information systems across and between the various stakeholders.

Determining what constitutes information systems value and success in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: In order to examine how successful a particular technology is in aiding the fight against COVID-19, it is necessary to understand what constitutes “value”. Comprehensively defining and capturing the value of a system is usually very challenging, as it often manifests in many multi-dimensional and polymorphous, ephemeral ways (Schryen, 2013). It manifests in ways that are hard to measure with quantitative indicators, and there is often a significant time lag between the implementation of the system and the resulting value (Schryen, 2013). What constitutes value is often inextricably tied to the context of use and is usually multi-faceted. An analysis of what should constitute value in the case of COVID-19 shows there are many polymorphous and often contradictory measures, most of which have perceived strengths and weaknesses. For example, a directive to lock down a nation will, on the one hand, most likely reduce the number of cases but will have a detrimental impact on measures of the economy and societal issues such as education and mental health. There are several metrics used to assess the COVID-19 situation, including:

1. the number of COVID-19 infections in patients with symptoms,

2. the number of COVID-19 infections in patients without symptoms,

3. COVID-19 hospital admission in the general population,

4. COVID-19 patients moved to ICU (or described as “severe”),

5. COVID-19 patients progressed from “severe” to “critical”, and

6. COVID-19 deaths or mortality rate.

Certainly, metrics like these raise many questions, such as: How relevant are these metrics concerning information systems value and success? Can digital artefacts and practices contribute to improving these measures and metrics? How can metrics like these be used to inform and evaluate information system designs?

Examining the behavioural, temporal, societal, and organisational aspects of the pandemic: Technology is playing a central role in many if not all aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We rely on technology to help find a cure, to keep supply chains functioning and to allow businesses to find new ways of working during the unprecedented upheaval. However, it is often the behavioural, societal and organisational aspects of these technologies and their use that will define ultimate success in this pandemic battle, and it is these aspects rather than the technologies themselves that are often the most challenging. Understanding the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in COVID-19 related digital practices is a current critical example of this challenge (Ågerfalk, 2020). Temporality is a related timely example. Time is playing a central and pivotal role across many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our lives are all affected over an unknown period. In terms of interventions implemented by government officials, it is not the interventions themselves that are up for debate but the timing of the introduction and lifting of these interventions. Essentially all of the core metrics used to measure the spread and devastation of the pandemic are time-oriented (e.g., new cases per day, deaths per day, number admitted to ICU per day, three and five-day rolling averages of each, the overall trends by week and month). It is these metrics that each government’s actions are judged on, and it is these that each population looks to for reassurance. However, time is an inherently complex, multi-faceted, subtle concept and is, by nature, socially embedded. Failure to acknowledge and address these complex nuances usually renders analysis inaccurate and incomplete. Information systems researchers have traditionally been slow to address the polymorphous, complex and nuanced nature of time in their research (Saunders & Kim, 2007; Shen et al., 2015; Nandhakumar, 2002). Recent research also highlights the specific and exacerbated nature of temporal complexity in the context of big data (Conboy et al., 2018, 2019). This complexity is particularly concerning in the context of COVID-19, where so many are basing their decisions on big data analytics. Researchers can now examine the temporal complexities in a COVID-19 context and can determine how this complexity impacts how we think and judge the use of technologies as a solution.

The negative role of information systems in the COVID-19 pandemic: We must also acknowledge that the role of information systems in the COVID-19 crisis is not always a positive one, and technology and its misuse can have detrimental effects. The efficacy of various COVID-19 screening and testing technology is being questioned. Over-reliance on technology such as face masks and COVID-19 tracing apps can have negative behavioural implications as people let their guard down and reduce adherence to social distancing and other preventative measures. Of particular relevance to information systems research are, for instance, new openings for cybercrime and the spread of misinformation and fake news through social media. Concerns like these have led to the WHO Director-General stating we are fighting an infodemic as much as an epidemic (Zarocostas, 2020).¹ Tackling the COVID-19 infodemic has been established as a research priority in the WHO response strategy (WHO, 2020), which has resulted in WHO’s Myth Busters webpage² and Stop The Spread campaign.³

3. The journal review process

The review process at our major journals is rigorous and, therefore, time-consuming. A lot can be said about the long lead times, and we all want to be able to move quicker from submission to decision. It is probably fair to say that the review process of our top journals is too long if we want our research to have an impact here and now. During a seismic event such as the COVID-19 pandemic, having a manuscript spend up to two years or more under review is not good enough. The current situation forces us to question the norms of academia that are not often sufficiently challenged.

What, then, can we do? For inspiration, why not turn to the disciplines more directly involved with the current pandemic, such as virology and epidemiology? These disciplines have published consistently on COVID-19 since the outbreak, and the articles are to be found in some of the most respected medical journals (Chen et al., 2020; Zou et al., 2020). Even before Corona made the headlines, articles with practical guidelines for how to treat Corona patients appeared (Wax & Christian, 2020). How is it possible for these journals to find rigorous enough studies on such short notice, while information systems journals need a couple of years to satisfy referees? Indeed, some Corona research was most likely already well advanced and close to acceptance when the pandemic became a fact. However, we also see studies that directly address the spread of COVID-19 (Deng & Peng, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020) so this cannot be the full explanation. Admittedly, several of these recent studies are meta-studies and reviews that rely on secondary data and already published results. However, we note two main differences as compared with our field. First, medical journals seem to be less afraid of publishing material that information systems reviewers would likely find underdeveloped and not yet ready for primetime. Second, medical journals focus on timely empirical contributions rather than always requiring significant theoretical contributions.

Journals can help bring some of the “occluded arguments” of the review process into the public domain by inviting critical referees to craft response articles (Ågerfalk, 2019). Being even more radical, it seems medical journals put less focus on the author–reviewer cycle by moving faster into the reader–author circle, thus inviting other researchers than the authors and referees to contribute to the discourse. These contributions would then consist of subsequent publications that sometimes confirm and sometimes rebut the earlier findings. Contradictory findings are not necessarily seen as a problem in this model – one year, fat is bad for you, the next year it is OK after all, and dairy is good, now sugar is bad. By contrast, it seems information systems journals are reluctant to publish anything that can be criticised in the slightest. As a consequence, we end up asking authors to tweak their framing and theoretical arguments in absurdity. We want them to dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s. Of course, we need rigour, but at some point, we also need to let go and move the discourse outside of the occluded review process. As we see it, this is not to prioritise relevance over rigour but to prioritise relevant rigour over less relevant rigour. Such prioritisation is probably especially critical when timely contributions are required, such as when aspiring to help mitigate an ongoing pandemic. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

4. The pandemics special communications

With the EJIS special communications on Information Systems in the Age of Pandemics, we aim to streamline the journal review process as much as possible while still upholding rigour at the level one would expect from a leading journal. All submissions that fit the aims of the special communications are reviewed by at least one of the special communications editors (the authors of this editorial) and an additional referee, usually an experienced member of our regular editorial board. Submissions that after review show substantial promise and where the editors see a straight path towards publication are considered further. The aim is to publish accepted articles on an ongoing basis in the first available issue of EJIS.

We are proud to present the first two accepted papers in this issue. The first article – What drives unverified information sharing and cyberchondria during the COVID-19 pandemic? – addresses how the COVID-19 pandemic puts the spread of unverified online information in a new light and offers useful advice on how to manage COVID-19 induced cyberchondria. The second article – A multi-level influence model of COVID-19 themed cybercrime – discusses cybercrime in the wake of COVID-19 and provides recommendations that can help create a safer digital world in these difficult times when so much activity is being forced online. Both articles illustrate well how information systems researchers can contribute during the current pandemic and at the same time, be an inspiration to further research.

Since we announced the call for special communications, we have received quite a few author queries. Because special communications is a new format, we understand that questions abound. The following are some practical suggestions for writing a special communications article:

• The word count can be lower than usual so focus your manuscript on the area or angle of interest. For some, this will be theoretical and for others practical. You need a bit of both – so do not ignore either completely – but the bulk of the paper can place emphasis on whichever you think is strongest.

• The manuscript needs to have some knowledge contribution – theoretical, empirical or artefactual (Ågerfalk & Karlsson, 2020). Framing exactly what debate you are contributing to will be important. Since special communications papers will be published on an ongoing basis, do not forget to check recent issues of EJIS to help situate your work and avoid unmotivated overlap.

• For an empirical paper, the key is to get some useful data and also have some good suggestions/lessons for people and organisations. If the lessons are simply common sense, it might not be that interesting, but if there is something new, that would be good.

• Avoid complex theoretical reasoning, and especially ontological arguments, as these tend to cause disagreement that is not always easy to resolve. Emphasise the empirical basis of your argument rather than bolster a new theoretical construct.

• For an issues and opinions paper, the critical thing is to articulate an information systems related issue and offer a controversial opinion that questions the current conventional wisdom on a topic.

• Think about the timeline of your work and its expected publication; specifically how this matches the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you aim to produce something that can make an immediate impact, then the paper needs to be ready for submission very soon. However, if your paper is oriented more towards long term strategies for addressing the COVID-19 issue, for instance, what organisations or governments need to do in the next two to five years, then submitting the work a little later down the line might be preferable. In the latter case, you may certainly also consider submitting as a regular paper to the journal.

• Finally, it is essential to emphasise some immediate impact of the work – something that we can say is helping solve the current pandemic, even in some small way.

We look forward to receiving your contribution and hope we can demonstrate that information systems researchers have something to offer of value in these challenging times.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/munich-security-conference, accessed May 15 2020.

2. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus−2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters, accessed May 15 2020.

3. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/countering-misinformation-about-covid-19, accessed May 15 2020.