Why Conference Research Deserves to Be Counted
Journal based rankings tell an important story about research productivity in the Information Systems (IS) discipline, but not the whole story. By focusing on journal publications, they leave out another important part of the discipline’s scholarly activity: papers published in conference proceedings.
IS conferences serve a distinct and complementary role. They are where scholars share emerging ideas, receive early feedback, form collaborations, and build research communities across topics and regions. For doctoral students and early career scholars, conferences also provide vital opportunities to present their work, learn from others, and become part of the wider IS community.
Why This Project Matters
What we count shapes what we recognize. When conference proceedings are not included in research productivity rankings, the contributions of many scholars, as well as the institutions supporting their work, become less visible.
This project makes those contributions visible. It provides a conference based view of research activity by showing which scholars and institutions are publishing at four major IS conferences: AMCIS, ECIS, PACIS, and ICIS.
It recognizes nearly every scholar and institution that contributed to the IS conference proceedings during the five year window. This broad coverage provides meaningful recognition to doctoral students, early career scholars, and contributors from institutions whose work may receive limited visibility in journal based productivity rankings.
This ranking is not intended to replace journal based productivity measures, and conference proceedings alone do not measure research quality or impact. Instead, it offers a complementary lens: a transparent way to recognize an important form of scholarly activity that journal based rankings often overlook.
What the Ranking Measures
The site counts full or completed research papers, as well as short or Emergent Research Forum (ERF) papers, published in the proceedings of AMCIS, ECIS, PACIS, and ICIS.
Publication credit is assigned to authors and institutions using established counting approaches from research productivity studies, as described by Chua et al. (2002) in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems.
Results are reported over a rolling five year window. This keeps the ranking focused on current conference activity while reducing the influence of any single conference year.
The ranking should therefore be interpreted as a measure of recent and sustained research activity within these four conferences. It is not a complete assessment of a scholar, institution, or research program.
About the Curator
This project is created and maintained by Ali Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Information Systems in the Stephenson Department of Entrepreneurship and Information Systems at Louisiana State University.
Questions about the methodology, data corrections, and suggestions for improving the project are welcome at aliahmed@lsu.edu.