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Ranking Scholarly Outlets for Information Technology Abstract

Many well-established disciplines have a number of outlets for scholarly work, including archival journals, conference proceedings, periodicals, and others. These outlets are commonly known within the discipline, and many have an established reputation and even ranking. Faculty seeking to publish in one of these disciplines, and seeking to advance in rank and tenure status, are well served by knowing the most common scholarly outlets and their rankings. The relatively new discipline of Information Technology does not yet have a well established ranking of scholarly outlets. This paper presents the findings of a survey conducted among the members of the IT community about their perceptions of the quality of various journals and conference proceedings. The rankings of the 20 publications were not widely separated, ranging from 5.0 (of 5.0) for Computerworld, to 4.07 for Dr. Dobbs Journal. Likewise, the rankings of the seven conference proceedings were also not widely separated, ranging from 4.97 for SIGITE, to 4.33 for SIGMetrics. Scholars and professionals in IT will be well served by this study, which is a first effort to establish the reputation and ranking of scholarly outlets in the IT discipline.

Introduction

Scholarly work is a major expectation for faculty at many 4-year colleges and universities. Two of the major efforts of such faculty are establishing a research program, and providing evidence of the quality of their research. The most widely accepted method of providing evidence of quality research is through publication of this research in peer-reviewed journals or in proceedings of important conferences.

Many well-established disciplines have widely accepted rankings of publications for their discipline, based on an established reputation over the years, and based on survey studies.1,2,3,4,5,6,7 These same references also demonstrate the value of these publication rankings in establishing the quality of scholarship for a given author or institution. Of particular interest to readers of this paper are two papers on the rankings of journals in computing8 and information systems.9

In a new academic discipline, it can be quite difficult for faculty to establish the quality of their scholarship, since publications and conferences are often relatively new, and a widely accepted ranking of these scholarly outlets does not exist. The purpose of this paper is to take a first step toward establishing a ranking of scholarly outlets in the academic discipline of information technology.

Methodology

New academic disciplines arise from closely-related disciplines, and faculty members in these new disciplines usually have degrees in these closely-related disciplines. It is generally agreed that information technology has arisen from the disciplines of computer science and information systems, as well as the somewhat more distant disciplines of mathematics, computer engineering, electrical engineering, engineering technology, and communications. As would be

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Lunt, B., & Bailey, M., & Ekstrom, J., & Helps, C. R., & Wood, D. (2007, June), Ranking Scholarly Outlets For Information Technology Paper presented at 2007 Annual Conference & Exposition, Honolulu, Hawaii. 10.18260/1-2--1855