Profiling the research productivity of tenured information systems faculty at U.S. institutions

Abstract

How many articles in highly rated journals do Information Systems research faculty publish to earn tenure? Which journals are highly rated outlets? Tenure candidates, promotion and tenure committees, and those who are asked to write external letters are frequently called upon to answer such questions. When Dennis et al. (2006) examined all IS Ph.D. graduates entering academic careers few faculty had published enough articles in 20 "elite" journals in six years to meet tenure research expectations at research-intensive schools. Our study builds on the dialog started by Dennis et al. In our study we counted the number of journal articles at the point of tenure for faculty who earned tenure within five to seven years after their Ph.D. graduation date. We also examined the effect of acknowledging different sets of journals as highly rated on the publication rates of faculty who earned tenure. Specifically, we examined the effects of expanding on Dennis et al. by including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the AIS, Information Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems in the journal basket. We also looked at the effect of acknowledging highly rated non-IS business journals and highly rated computer science and engineering journals. Finally, we present journal publication benchmarks based on these findings for different types of research institutions.