Assessing Scholarly Impact

Abstract
As we move into an era where academic assessment is mandated by funding/government agencies, and discussed at length in the press, it is imperative that academics identify the most appropriate measures by which to evaluate their efforts. Either academics can come up with measures that they believe – and can support - are a reasonable way to evaluate their work, or someone else will develop measures that may or may not be appropriate. To this end, Professor Hirschheim will explore the thorny issue of how an academic’s 'contribution' to the community is assessed. Often such 'assessments' are opaque, not well formulated, nor clearly articulated. But this need not be the case. In his talk, Professor Hirschheim will examine what 'scholarly influence' means, and how it is, or can be, assessed. He will look not only at the various citation metrics but also the journals, their rankings, and whether such rankings can be supported and how. Whilst this talk focuses on data from the field of Information Systems (IS), journals from fields such as Management, Marketing, Finance and Accounting are also discussed. As such, the analysis undertaken should prove valuable and appropriate to any disciplinary domain.

Biography
Professor Rudy Hirschheim - PhD (University of London), PhD (hon, University of Oulu), PhD (hon, University of Bern) - is the Ourso Family Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at LSU. He has held visiting appointments at various universities in Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He was made a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems, and received the LEO Award for lifetime achievement in the field of Information Systems. He has previously been on the faculties of the University of Houston, the London School of Economics, and Templeton College of the University of Oxford. He was the founding editor of the John Wiley Series in Information Systems in 1985, and continued as its co-editor until 2008. He is currently Senior Editor for Information and Organization and has been Senior Editor for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. He is on the editorial boards of: Journal of MIS, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of Strategic Information Systems; and has been on the editorial boards of MIS Quarterly and European Journal of Information Systems. He has previously been Vice President of Publications for the Association for Information Systems.