Trends in the conduct of information systems research

Abstract

With the rapidly changing institutional and technological environment for information systems research, it is useful to examine how the conduct of research itself has been changing. In this Debates and Perspectives article, based on analysis of over 1800 articles, we first describe trends from 2000 to 2015 in co-authorship, research areas, unit of analysis, and research direction-setting initiatives. Our results indicate a rising trend among information systems researchers toward co-authorship. We also find that information systems research converges on a few broad research areas, and there is increasing diversity of topics within these broad themes. Concerning level of analysis, our results indicate a decreasing trend toward macro (organizational) studies. Finally, we note a lack of positive significant trends in the publication of special issue articles, review articles, and meta-analytic studies. We then offer our perspective regarding these trends along with a discussion of the importance of managing vicious and virtuous cycles that may result from community adaptations to environmental changes.