Call for Submissions
Twentieth Anniversary Special Section: Information Systems Research

Information Systems Research is now twenty years old.  Over these years, it has established its position as an elite journal that publishes research on important phenomena from diverse perspectives, including the technical, economic, behavioral and strategic aspects.  As part of the celebration of its twentieth anniversary, we will publish a special anniversary section late in 2010.  The pages for this will be funded by the Information Systems Society of INFORMS.  This section will contain forward looking research commentaries on significant new directions and opportunities for research on information systems phenomena.

Research commentaries will focus on the following:

. Identifying and describing a significant phenomenon that should be the focus of future research.  The desired phenomenon should either be emerging, or under researched, but likely to be significant and have important anticipated impacts on research and practice.  In addition, the focus could also be on a phenomenon that is well researched, but is ripe for fresh perspectives that could provide new breakthroughs in our understanding about the topic.  Therefore, the authors should explain the phenomenon, make a case for its importance, and provide convincing evidence that it has not received the required level of attention in existing research.

. Prescribing a research agenda by identifying a few important questions on the topic, why they are likely to be interesting, what their potential theoretical connections are, and how they might be studied.

. Providing directions for how researchers could study the phenomenon and produce important insights.

Research commentaries should not be longer than 25 pages, double spaced and should conform to all the other usual submission guidelines of the journal.  The structure of a research commentary should be as follows:

. Description of the phenomenon and why it is an important topic worthy of future attention.

. Brief, but compelling literature review (with intelligent use of Tables) to demonstrate how and where current research does not address the topic.

. Speculations or prescriptions about important research questions and how they should be studied.

The purpose of this call is to invite proposals for submission of such research commentaries.  The proposals are not the full-length commentaries as described above.  Instead, they are a brief description of the intended phenomenon, why it is significant, and the authors' own competence in producing an insightful research commentary.  The proposals should not be longer than five pages, double spaced.  The proposals will be evaluated by the editorial board of the journal.  After this preliminary review, a limited number of proposals will be invited for full-length submissions.

The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2010, though earlier submissions are encouraged.  We particularly encourage junior scholars (i.e., those who have been active in research during the past ten years) to consider submitting proposals on interesting phenomena, perhaps in collaboration with other experienced colleagues.  Proposals should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at sambamurthy@bus.msu.edu.

After review, authors of the selected proposals will be notified by the March 15 and will be asked to submit their full-length papers by June 30.  After review, authors will be notified about the acceptance of their work by September 15 and the final versions will be due by October 15.


Vallabh Sambamurthy
Eli Broad Professor of Information Technology
Eli Broad College of Business
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1122
Phone: (517) 432-2916
E-mail: sambamurthy@bus.msu.edu
Website: http://www.bus.msu.edu/staff/staff.cfm?staffID=426


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