Assessing scholarly influence: Proposing new metrics

This study examines the use of the Hirsch family of indices to assess the scholarly influence of IS researchers. It finds that while the top tier journals are important indications of a scholar's impact, they are neither the only nor indeed the most important sources of scholarly influence. In effect other ranking studies, by narrowly bounding the venues included in those studies, effectively privilege certain venues by declaring them as more highly influential than they are when one includes broader measures of scholarly impact. Such studies distort the discourse. For instance, contrary to the common view that to be influential one must publish in a very limited set of US journals, our results of the impact of scholars published in top tier European IS journals are of similar influence to authors publishing in the MIS Quarterly, ISR and Management Science even though they do not publish in those venues.