Empirical Research in Information Systems: The Practice of Relevance

This commentary discusses why most IS academic research today lacks relevance to practice and suggests tactics, procedures, and guidelines that the IS academic community might follow in their research efforts and articles to introduce relevance to practitioners. The commentary begins by defining what is meant by relevancy in the context of academic research. It then explains why there is a lack of attention to relevance within the IS scholarly literature. Next, actions that can be taken to make relevance a more central aspect of IS research and to communicate implications of IS research more effectively to IS professionals are suggested.