Do scholarly journals have cultural values?
本文以《信息系统期刊》为例，通过编辑和副编辑的反思，系统阐述了学术期刊的文化价值观，包括关怀、信任、诚信、及时性等，并展示了这些价值观如何指导编辑实践。
Over the last few years, we have developed and promulgated a set of cultural values at the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) that reflect what we believe are important facets of the research writing, reviewing and publishing process. In this editorial, we draw on the reflections of some of our Senior (SEs) and Associate Editors (AEs) to formally articulate these values. An earlier editorial (Davison, 2021) reflected on aspects of diversity at the ISJ and an appreciation of diversity is certainly one such value. Indeed, a content analysis of some of our previous editorials would highlight a number of them. Other values, which we discuss in this editorial include the care that we owe to a variety of stakeholders; the notion of the ISJ as a family of like-minded scholars who share common scholarly principles; the respect and trust we have for one another; our openness to new ideas; the ethos of transparency, integrity and fairness; the sense of accountability to our readers and the IS discipline; our timeliness and our constructive criticism and developmental reviewing. This is perhaps our most fundamental value. We care for the many human and non-human entities (people, disciplines, ideas) that we interact with. The foremost entity is the author. Our sense of care means that we aim to provide constructive and insightful feedback to authors in a timely manner, and that if we see promise in a manuscript, we help them improve the paper to realise the promise in eventual publication. At the same time, we aim to be polite and friendly, even when we have to reject a submitted paper. We also aim to be fair and transparent (at least insofar as is possible given the exigencies of a blind review system) in the various decisions we make throughout the review process. As we evaluate papers, we strive to be open-minded and respectful toward different research approaches and traditions. We aim to be inclusive and welcome submissions from all branches of Information Systems, provided that the research makes a contribution to the discipline. We expect to see significant theoretical contributions in submitted research articles, but there are different expectations for practitioner and policy papers, research opinions, research methods papers, etc. We do desk reject papers quite often, key reasons being poor fit with the journal and failure to make the contributions appropriate for the manuscript type. However, even as we do that we strive to be transparent with regard to the rationale for the rejection. We also care about our readers, which means we aim to publish papers that inspire them to be better scholars and/or practitioners. Our care for reviewers and AEs and SEs involves such actions as ensuring that: reviewers have enough time (including extensions) to craft their reviews, but not to the extent that the delivery of the review package to the authors is delayed unreasonably; AEs and SEs are not overloaded with papers for review, and that they too have sufficient time to undertake their responsibilities. We also hope that through their respective roles, reviewers will learn new things about the topic they are reviewing and that SEs and AE's will broaden their scholarly perspective. Finally, we hold ourselves accountable to the IS discipline, which itself benefits from the articles that we publish. As an IS journal, we strive to publish IS research of a high quality and to make good the early promise that we may see in unusual manuscripts that push at the discipline's boundaries. The scholarship that we champion is of the highest standards, notably with regard to rigour and relevance as appropriate to the topic and method selected by authors. Trust is an important value for us and we develop many trust-based relationships at the ISJ. We very much hope that authors will trust us to handle their manuscripts, knowing that we care for them. We also trust that reviewers who perform the essential task of critically commenting on a submitted paper will be impartial, substantive and honest in doing so in the scholarly sense. Occasionally, we need to rescind a review if it lacks sufficient analytical depth, breadth or accuracy or if it is simply too short. This might be seen as offensive by the reviewer, but the care that we owe to authors sometimes necessitates this kind of action. We do also rescind AE and SE reports (though rarely). At the ISJ, the Editor-in-Chief trusts the SEs and AEs to be professional in the way they handle papers, select reviewers and make recommendations. The intention is not to micromanage review processes unless it is absolutely essential, which usually means that the trust has broken down and cannot be repaired. Two examples of the breakdown of such trust are guest editors of a special issue who abjectly failed to uphold their responsibilities by accepting papers without review; and an AE who knowingly assigned as reviewers people who had a conflict of interest with the authors. Trust is a powerful determinant of quality and we think it is important to be able to trust our SEs and AEs without fear that they will violate that trust. Trust here links closely with the respect we have for our colleagues who devote so much of their time and energy to the process of writing and reviewing papers. Integrity is closely aligned with the trust that we have in our people. In parallel with that trust, we expect that our colleagues will uphold the highest standards of professional integrity and probity when they handle manuscripts. This requirement particularly applies to the Editor-in-Chief, and the SEs and AEs because they know the identity of the authors whose papers they are handling. The IS research community is not very large, and the subcommunities on particular topics, methods, epistemologies, etc., are often much smaller still, where people have close interaction. As we develop our research networks, we also develop professional relationships with increasing numbers of people, all of whom we know to some degree. As a result, it is quite common that we have to handle a manuscript submitted by a friend, fellow editor, colleague, or someone with whom we may have co-authored in the past. Irrespective of who the authors are, or indeed, who the submitting author is, our assessments of manuscripts are based on the merits of the research; we disregard any other personal considerations. Generally speaking, everyone in an editorial role is likely at some point, to experience the situation where they have to reject, or recommend rejection of, the work submitted by closer or more distant colleagues, including their own editorial colleagues, head of department or dean, past co-authors and friends. At the ISJ, we expect our SEs and AEs to be guided by their professional integrity in such situations. At the ISJ, all editorial decisions are confirmed and communicated to authors by the Editor-in-Chief. Although timeliness has been briefly mentioned above under the care we owe to authors, it is worth emphasising here separately. All journals set indicative deadlines for authors and reviewers. These may be more or less generous as circumstances dictate, and in any case deadlines can be extended. However, excessive extensions are problematic for a number of reasons. Authors who take a year or more for one round of revision may find that their work is increasingly outdated and the value of publication, at least in terms of the contribution to contemporary knowledge, will recede accordingly. Reviewers (and editors) who take an excessive amount of time to consider an assigned paper cause the journal to do a disservice to authors who are (more or less patiently) waiting for the outcome of the review process. At the ISJ, the Editor-in-Chief encourages compliance with deadlines and sends appropriate reminders to authors, reviewers and editors. We regard such compliance as a basic component of respect. Reviewers and authors who hope to be invited to join the journal as an AE should bear in mind our expectation for timeliness. In the rare situation where reviewers are excessively delayed, we will bring in emergency reviewers (for instance from the editorial advisory board) and seek to expedite the review process. If SEs or AEs are excessively and routinely delayed, they can expect that their tenure in that position may be shortened. Naturally, there are emergencies and circumstances beyond our control, and the current pandemic–endemic public health situation seems to constitute an ongoing one. We try very hard to accommodate reasonable requests for extensions. However, the authors are still waiting, and our duty of care for authors means that we sometimes have to intervene with an executive action. It takes a village to get a paper accepted and published. At the ISJ, we believe that such a community should be one where its constituents, notably authors, reviewers, editors and readers, engage in intellectually inspiring, professionally disciplined and at the same time, kind and respectful interactions with one another. We greatly value the role that each constituent plays in ensuring the high standards of publication expected by our readers. We hope that constituents are able to build capacity for their own scholarly progress, as well as collectively advance the IS discipline. Cultural values are not easy to express; they often remain intangible. With respect to the subject of this editorial, it may well be that we recognise them not only through explicit words, but also through the invaluable sense of being among fellow travellers who wish us well in our scholarly journey and push us to achieve what we could not accomplish alone. In this issue of the journal, we present five papers. In the first paper, Cui et al. (2022) examine the operational alignment of the open innovation search approach with information technology (IT) use given that open innovation search can be significantly enhanced by IT. Drawing on prior open innovation and IT literature, the authors theorise that organisations employing a centralised (decentralised) open innovation approach and a high IT use intensity for external (internal) information flows are likely to achieve a high degree of exploratory (exploitative) innovation. They further suggest that harnessing exploratory and exploitative innovation can lead to organisational innovation performance. They validate their theoretical perspective through a field survey involving 186 organisations. In the second paper, Zheng and Wu (2022) focus on how digital labour platforms could reconfigure spatial and temporal orders at multiple scales to produce ‘speed’ in the on-demand economy. Through a qualitative study of food delivery platform workers in China, the authors demonstrate how the acceleration of platform capitalism is built upon and reproduces existing social inequalities in the daily practice of algorithmically managed labour. Theoretically, the paper provides a performative view of spatiotemporality that is practised, material, multiple and political. Through such a lens, the authors shed light on the power relations in platform work by incorporating analyses at the level of algorithmic practice, organisation of work and social structures. Meanwhile, the study presents rich empirical details of workers' interaction with the technology, illuminating how ‘speed’ on demand is materially performed at scale in embodied lived experience, and maintained with workers bearing the invisible costs of the breakdown and repair of ‘speed’. In the third paper, Meng et al. (2022) explore the negative implications of the sharing economy paradigm from the oft-neglected perspective of incumbent firms. They suggest that the process through which the negative implications arise consists of three cyclical phases. First, the contextual conditions tend to induce incumbent firms to respond reactively, and fragment the organisational identity of their employees. Subsequently, these influences dilute the resources available to respond strategically to disruption, and make it harder for the incumbent firms to allocate resources optimally due to divided loyalties. As a result, the incumbent firms would not be able to use technology in the same way as the disruptors because they can neither acquire the same quality and quantity of digital resources and capabilities, nor deploy them in the same way. When this happens, it reinforces the contextual conditions further (e.g., customers perceive the offerings of the disruptors to be superior) to form a vicious cycle. In the fourth paper, Kinzinger et al. (2022), in response to a strong increase in e-commerce sales worldwide, address the trend of online shops becoming increasingly interactive. They explore the impact of high sensory enabling (HSE) virtual product presentation modes using state-of-the-art virtual reality (VR) technology that allows consumers to imitate natural movement and interactions via head-mounted displays and dual hand VR controllers. Based on attitude theory, cue summation theory, as well as repetitive learning and memory, the authors employ an experimental to study the difference between an HSE product presentation and a low sensory enabling virtual product presentation mode that utilises conventional computer screens, along with mouse and keyboard inputs. The results show significantly higher values for the tested cognitive, affective and conative outcomes of consumer learning whereby the influence on the cognitive aspects is moderated by buying frequency. In the fifth paper, Osmundsen et al. (2022) address the confusion of the relational aspect of the theory of affordances. They argue that integrating Heideggerian concepts of familiarity and totality allows us to move beyond the dualistic view of relation. The actor perceives affordances based on their background understanding and everyday know-how in relation to a piece of equipment in a particular situation and context. Familiarity represents a shared background understanding of a shared world: a phenomenon containing any contextual element of practical everyday life. Hence, an actor's familiarity with the equipment in its referential totality can enable the actor to perceive affordances. This holistic view is also more in line with the original conception of Gibson, considering affordances as the environment provided. To illustrate, we presented a case study of a project concerning the development of a digital twin (i.e., digital representation of a physical asset) in the Norwegian grid sector. Many thanks to the ISJ Senior (Andreas Eckhardt, Angsana Techatassanasoontorn, Antonio Díaz Andrade) and Associate (Niki Panteli, Dimitra Petrakaki, Abayomi Baiyere, Carla Bonina) Editors who contributed thoughts to this editorial.