A Review of Premier Information Systems Journals for Pedagogical Orientation

Tenure, promotion, and merit pay at most universities are a direct function of the quantity and quality of a faculty’s publication. In particular, recent changes in the treatment of non-tenure track (NTT) faculty at a large south-eastern University suggest that for NTT faculty, whose assigned workload consists primarily of teaching responsibilities, the criteria for promotion are not only excellence in teaching, but also demonstrated evidence of teaching scholarship. This will likely apply to tenure track faculty at teaching institutions. Accomplishments in disciplinebased scholarship of discovery are considered complementary, but not a substitute for accomplishments in the scholarship of teaching; however, publications in pedagogical journals are considered a strong form of public dissemination. This requirement was the motivation behind this study to review the premier Information Systems journals for pedagogical orientation. Sixty-one (61) top ranked IS journals were selected for the initial study based on the cumulative IS journal rankings by Saunders (2003). In an email survey with telephone follow-up, journal editors were asked to identify the extent of the pedagogical orientation of their respective journals. Results revealed that with the exception of three (3) journals, these top-ranked journals published on average less six (6) percent or less of their articles with a pedagogical focus, and only two (2) journals declared a pedagogical focus. This means that there are very few outlets for IS pedagogy research in the leading IS