Identifying and Evaluating the Universe of Outlets for Information Systems Research: Ranking the Journals

We use a survey instrument to identify the universe of journal publication outlets for information systems (IS) research, to identify the IS journals, and to observe the value of the outlets to IS researchers. In an online survey we asked IS researchers to rate the value of IS publication outlets and to categorize them into IS journals, allied discipline journals, and professional and managerial magazines and journals. 1129 validated and non-duplicate respondents rated 326 journals, which we present in three rank-ordered lists, one for each of IS journals, allied discipline journals, and professional and managerial magazines and journals. In addition, we graphically present trends in the ranking of five selected journals from 1991 through 2003. This is the first attempt to identify the universe of IS journal publishing outlets, the first to rank the value of IS journals separately, and the first attempt to rank the value of IS publication outlets without pre-selecting the set of journals to be ranked