Assessing Junior Faculty Research Productivity in the IS Field: Recommendations for Promotion and Tenure Standards for Asian Schools

We gathered information about junior faculty research productivity in the information systems (IS) field in North America and in a set of top Asian schools. Our work complements prior studies on IS faculty research productivity in several ways. First, we focused on junior faculty research productivity, which refers to publication records of current tenure-track assistant professors. To provide statistics with a greater coverage of IS researchers, we also collected information about the pre-tenure publication records of associate professors. Second, we covered IS researchers who obtained their doctoral degrees in or after the year 2000 and counted their publications until 2013 to provide the most up-to-date information about junior faculty research productivity. Third, we collected information about IS researchers’ publications in leading IS journals (based on the AIS Senior Scholar basket of journals) and in elite broader business journals (based on the Financial Times list and UT Dallas list). Finally, examining junior faculty research productivity in the IS field in Asian schools and in North America enabled us to provide recommendations for promotion and tenure standards for Asian schools in light of the research productivity and tenure standards in North America.