From the Editors

Abstract

Welcome to the first issue for 2002, The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, Volume 33.As the incoming editors, we are excited and confident that Data Base will continue to serve the Information Systems community in general and SIGMIS membership in particular. Of equal importance, we welcome the fact that SIGCPR and the Computer Personnel readership are in the process of merging with SIGMIS, and we believe that Data Base will represent a viable outlet for this group.As we begin to get our feet wet in our new editorial role, we are happy to report that our outgoing editors Mark Keil and Eph McLean have made our lives much easier by already seeding us with a number of special issues under development and other articles that will fill most of the issues for this year. While it is customary among most journals for outgoing editors to complete the outstanding manuscripts and for incoming editors to handle new submissions, we wish to make it clear that this will not be the case for Data Base . Given their long tenures and large set of articles under development, such a transition would be tantamount to asking them to continue their editorial position for most of this year! Thus, we will manage all submissions (existing and new). Information is available at our new Data Base website at: http://hsb.baylor.edu/databaseBeyond the transition issues, we are excited about further implementing the continuous improvement philosophy of Data Base . On our agenda is the establishment of a full electronic submission and tracking system. Our goal is to have all submissions transmitted and monitored electronically by all stakeholders (i.e., our editorial board, authors, and reviewers).In addition, we plan to establish The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems as the place for comprehensive survey reviews and framework papers. In the long run, we hope that our top IS researchers will consider contributing in collaboration with their doctoral students or colleagues comprehensive reviews of key topic areas in our field. Similar to papers that were published in journals such as ACM Computing Survey in the 1980s, we believe that Data Base should now represent that repository of such information. Equally important are good framework papers that help to bring new perspectives or viewpoints toward an area of IS research. In future issues, we will elaborate on what we perceive as the differences and criteria for evaluating review and framework papers. Stay tuned.