An Exploratory Study of Information Systems Researcher Impact

This paper was received on July 22, 2007 and was with the author for 8 days for one revision. Volume 22, Article 1, pp. 1-32, January 2008 Citation counts of refereed articles are a potentially valuable measure of the impact of a researcher's work, in the information systems discipline as in many others. Citation counts can be generated from a number of data collections, including Thomson’s ISI database and Google Scholar. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the apparent impact of IS researchers, as disclosed by citation counts of their works in those two collections. Citation analysis using currently available databases is found to be fraught with many serious problems, particularly if the ISI collection is used. Unless these problems are appreciated and addressed, IS researchers will be under-valued by those with authority over research funding and employment, to the serious detriment of the IS discipline.