The inflation of academic intellectual capital: the case for design science research in Europe

Editor-in-ChiefEuropean Journal of Information Systemsadvance online publication,7 December 2010; doi:10.1057/ejis.2010.57In this issue, EJIS is publishing ‘Memorandum on Design OrientedInformation Systems Research’, an opinion that has engendered muchdebate in the German-speaking Information Systems (IS) community.Already published in German, we present an English translation. Followingthe Memorandum is ‘A Response to the Design-oriented InformationSystems Research Memorandum’ by Richard Baskerville, Kalle Lyytinen, V.Sambamurthy, and Detmar Straub. To a certain degree, these opinionpapers are part of a wider and continuing discourse about the evolvingmores in the assessment of academic research. This discourse hasmaterialized in a number of EJIS articles, for example, relating to Britain(Paul, 2008), Finland (Iivari, 2008), and Europe in general (Lyytinen et al.,2007).There are many issues; but a central theme in this discourse has beenthe value and scientific quality associated with the various artifacts thatrepresent IS research outcomes. Such artifacts not only include reportssuch as books, journal articles, and conference presentations, but becauseof the underlying technology they may also include operational computerprograms, machinery, and practices (Committee on Academic Careersfor Experimental Computer Scientists, 1994). The precedence in thevalue attached to these artifacts is evolving and is relative to differentinstitutions, academic traditions and cultures. In some cases, journalarticles are particularly privileged, and this privilege may even exclusivelyvalue only ‘top’ journal articles. In this editorial, our central concern froma perspective of editors of EJIS is this focus on the high value often attachedto our journal review and acceptance decisions. The basis of suchvaluations is not only ours, but also the precedence attached by others.These valuations are often situated within specific institutions or scholarlycultures. For example, in the scholarship of discovery (Boyer, 1996),articles in the scientific literature are often rightfully favored. In thescholarship of teaching, textbooks are rightfully valued (which does notlessen the value of scientific papers).A part of these issues therefore lies with various institutional or culturalvaluations of scholarly artifacts. Such valuations may err by levelingexpectations for research journal publications from scholars whoseduties do not actually involve scientific research. Research journal qualitymanagement has worked quite well to advance the community’s research-oriented knowledge via competitive peer reviews. These processes are notto blame for the rejection of artifacts that lack a serious researchcontribution.Further, a part of these issues is the evolution within some evaluationbodies toward the assignment of a singular importance of top journalplacements, and associated risks of a too rigid system in terms ofresearchers’ learning and personal development, complementarities ofpublications and diversity of outputs for overall richer knowledge andtools creation (Loos et al., 2010). Such evaluations will leave other artifacts