Established theory rejection

The Information Systems Journal (ISJ) receives a large number of submissions that describe the direct or slightly modified application of well-established theoretical perspectives in new contexts. Regrettably, senior editors reject many of these submissions without sending them out for formal review. This editorial explains why this occurs and describes what might instead constitute a sufficient contribution in such cases. In 2020, ISJ rendered final decisions on 368 submissions. While ISJ deliberately refrains from setting a hard target for the number of acceptances to allow for the publication of good research, the number of available slots for publication is obviously limited. Equally important as journal capacity constraints is limited review team resources. Each paper sent out for review requires a senior editor, an associate editor and two or three reviewers. When using the conservative number of two reviewers per paper, 368 final decisions would have required at least 736 reviewers. Finding reviewers with the relevant expertise to review submissions is a painstaking process, as the most qualified reviewers are many times already reviewing other manuscripts for ISJ and/or other journals. Associate editors often need to approach many potential reviewers in order to secure two well-qualified reviewers. Beyond this, submissions receiving revise and resubmit decisions require significantly longer time commitments. Three rounds of review can easily take 18 months (90 days for the review process and 90 days for the authors to revise the manuscript each round). While these time commitments seem painful at times, they are crucial to a quality review process that helps authors publish the very best version of their work. It is likely that most authors have experienced the frustrating process of multiple rounds of review, only to realise that in the end their work was much improved. What does all this have to do with submissions that simply apply established theory in a new context? The answer is, a great deal! As an Association of Information Systems (AIS) basket of eight journal, ISJ receives a significant number of high-quality submissions. Editors must make tough choices about which manuscripts to send out for review and which manuscripts to reject directly (i.e., ‘desk reject’). Editorial teams consider many factors during this process. Will the research be of interest to the IS community, and, importantly, to ISJ readers? Does the research build on research previously published in ISJ? Is the research well-motivated? What are the chances of eventual acceptance? Is the theoretical framework appropriate? Are the methods suitable for answering the research question? Does the research provide new insight to an existing body of knowledge or open up a new area of inquiry? A negative answer to the last question is one of the primary reasons why editors frequently reject submissions that merely apply well-established theoretical models in new contexts. A particularly salient example of well-established theory frequently applied in new contexts is TAM (and its derivatives, such as TAM2, TAM3, UTAUT and UTAUT2). TAM and its related versions are well known; thus, it is relatively straightforward for researchers to apply them in new contexts such as when organisations introduce a new software package to users. This is not to say that conducting this research does not require a great deal of effort. In many cases, it does. Nor does it suggest that the findings are not valuable, especially for the organisation in which the researchers apply the model. In fact, organisations should be interested in applying TAM; they can learn about the acceptance of new technology using a well-established model. However, such applications do not provide scientific insight beyond the knowledge that the model is predictive in a new context. Since researchers have repeatedly established TAM's predictive properties, such studies add very little to existing knowledge and thus are unlikely to survive the rigorous ISJ review process. DOI: 10.1111/isj.12360