Symbolic capital and the basket of 8: What changed after the creation of the basket?

Abstract

The creation of the AIS College of Senior Scholars' basket of journals (SSB) was an attempt to address the perception that, compared with other fields, only a few Information Systems (IS) journals were widely considered elite-level journals in tenure and promotion cases. We propose that the creation of the SSB provided a signal to the IS field that conveyed an additional stock of symbolic capital to the journals in the SSB. We theorize that the symbolic capital signal provided by the SSB changed the individual publication behaviors of IS researchers, specifically regarding collaboration and submission concentration. We observe that this behavioral change reduced journal participation inequality and influenced journal quality metrics for journals included and excluded from the SSB. We report a study using 5830 articles from ten journals over sixteen years (2000–2015). Our results suggest that IS scholars responded to the symbolic capital signal of the SSB in a bifurcated manner. Regarding IS research production, the level of collaboration increased at most journals, and a broader group of IS researchers published in those journals. This shift in behavior led to a reduction of inequality regarding institutional and geographic representation in publishing. However, we also report unexpected variation in the journal quality metrics of SSB journals vis-à-vis non-SSB journals that suggest that IS researchers largely ignored the SSB signal from a research consumption standpoint. Finally, we provide several recommendations for the continued evaluation of the SSB by the Senior Scholars and tenure and promotion committees.