The Effects of the Quantification of Faculty Productivity: Perspectives from the Design Science Research Community

In recent years, efforts to assess faculty research productivity have become more focused on the measurable quantification of academic outcomes. For benchmarking academic performance, different ranking and rating lists have been developed that define what is regarded as high-quality research. While many scholars in IS consider lists such as the Senior Scholar’s Basket (SSB) to be good guidance, others who belong to less-mainstream groups of the discipline could perceive these lists as constraining. We analyze the perceived impact of the SSB on Information Systems (IS) academics working in Design Science Research (DSR), and in particular how it affected their research behavior. We found the DSR community felt a strong normative influence from the SSB. A content analysis of the SSB shows evidence that some of the journals in the SSB have become more accepting of DSR. We noted the emergence of papers in the SSB that outline the role of theory in DSR and describe DSR methodologies, indicating that the DSR community is rallying to describe what to expect from a DSR manuscript to the broader IS community, and to guide the DSR community on how to organize papers for publication in the SSB.