Toward a Conceptualization of Research Output Quality

The evaluation of scholarly output is of great importance as it affects the lives of those in academia in terms of decisions on promotion, tenure and funding. In this evaluation, we seek to determine the quality of a scholar\u27s research output. However, the concept of scholarly output quality has been under-theorized. In this research, we investigated existing studies in information systems related to journal and researcher ranking and found that they have an atheoretical engagement with concept of quality which would lead to a subjectivity in the evaluation of research out. To resolve this problem, we propose a concept of quality for research output and discuss its implications for academic research