EJIS moving up in the rankings

I am delighted to report that the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) has moved up in the latest edition of the journal ranking produced by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) in the UK. EJIS has moved up from a 3 to 4. Journals rated 4 are described as publishing “the most original and best-executed research. As top journals in their field, these journals typically have high submission and low acceptance rates. Papers are heavily refereed. These top journals generally have among the highest citation impact factors within their field” (Chartered Association of Business Schools, 2021, p. 12).

It is pleasing to see that all the other journals listed in the AIS Basket of Eight (journals seen as the top journals in the field of information systems by the AIS Senior Scholars) have also moved up in the CABS ranking. Most are now ranked 4, whereas three are now ranked 4*.

Almost at the same time as the CABS ranking was released, the latest Journal Impact Factor report for 2020 was released by Clarivate. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is a journal-level metric calculated from data indexed in the Web of Science. The impact factor reflects the yearly average number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a journal. I am pleased to report that the impact factor for EJIS increased from 2.6 in 2019 to 4.344 in 2020. This is the highest impact factor ever for EJIS and continues the trend of a gradual increase in the impact factor for EJIS over time. Ten years ago, it was 1.7. The total number of citations to articles published in EJIS in 2020 was 4,757.

While the latest ranking results are all good news for EJIS and for the IS field, I interpret these numbers to be just one useful indicator among many. Many scholars criticise the numbers and the methodologies used to produce them as being biased in some way. I sympathise with many of these critiques. I agree that there are many alternative ways to rank journal quality. However, I interpret these numbers as not just reflecting reality, but as also creating reality. The numbers have a performative function. That is, they steer academics and institutions to publish certain kinds of work in particular publication outlets. In fact, this is the stated explicit purpose of the CABS journal ranking. The guide states that its purpose is “to assist researchers to make informed judgements about the outlets they may wish to publish in” (Chartered Association of Business Schools, 2021, p. 6).

Hence, as Editor-in-Chief of EJIS, I admit my bias in seeing the latest numbers as good news. If these numbers encourage IS scholars to submit their work to EJIS, then I will very happy. I look forward to receiving some of your best and most interesting research work.