PODCAST · business
this IS research
by Nick Berente and Jan Recker
Professors Nick Berente from the University of Notre Dame and Jan Recker from the University of Hamburg talk about current and persistent topics in information systems research, a field that explores how digital technologies change business and society. You can find papers and other materials we discuss in each episode at http://www.janrecker.com/this-is-research-podcast/.
Episodes
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How many conferences does a global community need
How many conferences does a global community need? Jan and Nick admittedly know only little about all the different IS research initiatives happening all over the planet. Time to change that. We talk with Mazen Shawosh, Founder and Past-President of the Saudi Association for Information Systems...
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Welcome, AI Reviewer Two
We all know about the infamous reviewer two. They are late with their reviews, read our paper only halfway, unduly criticize our work, and make us cite their own mediocre work. What if we replaced reviewer two with an AI reviewer? They could be more friendly, developmental, consistent,...
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The dawn of the age of autonomous scholarship
In information systems, we saw the rise of qualitative scholarship in the 1990s. In the 2000s, we saw the rise of analytics in research, fueled by the emergence of big data. In the 2010s, we saw the rise of econometric methods, diff-in-diff designs, and field experiments. What is next? Autonomous...
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Summertime, revision time
While Jan vacated his desk and took some weeks off in the summer, Nick has been busy working on paper revisions. Time to figure out how to handle the review and process. When is it okay to approach editors about a paper under review? Should you write the response before or after you revised the...
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What is the difference between advisors and mentors?
We have TC Eley IV on the show, a freshly minted assistant professor that just completed his PhD program. He is starting a new mentorship program for the AOM CTO Division, which marks a great opportunity to talk about supervision, advice, and mentoring in the IS field. Should mentors be...
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How to pick the perfect conference location
The Academy of Management has just moved the next AOM conferences outside of the United States. The Association for Information Systems has been rotating the International Conference for Information Systems between three different regions for many years. Picking conference locations seems to be...
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The AI Slop Tsunami
Do you think AI will have an impact on science? You are wrong. It will not–it already does. The annual International Conference on Information Systems received over 1,000 more paper submissions this year. Our main journals report a 20%, 40%, or even 100% increase in submission numbers. This could...
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Why you should put pictures of your reviewers next to your computer when you're writing
We devote enormous time and effort to developing a research idea, crafting a research design, executing a study, and then writing and polishing a paper – only to then find out that the reviewers do not find our contribution interesting enough to publish the paper. Years of work—wasted. There must...
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Glaser, Strauss, Charmaz, Nelson, Claude.ai? When digital nomads use generative AI to build grounded theories for the Journal of Information Technology
We have Daniel Schlagwein on the show, who is what Germans call a "Tausendsassa:" He is both a practitioner and researcher of digital nomadism, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information Technology, and president of the AIS special interest group on Grounded Theory Methodology. We touch…
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In three years, we won't be revising our papers anymore
Jan is annoyed because he needs to revise his papers and respond to his reviewers. Why can't ChatGPT or Claude do this for him? Why aren't we doing this already? So we start to wonder: what will happen to paper writing, reviews, and revisions as we enter an age where science practice is imbued…
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Who wants to be a this IS research expert? Jan's turn
Does Jan really know what he is talking about? Like we did with Nick last time, we play another round of trivia questions about information systems research – but now Nick is the host and Jan is the player. How well does he know the field? Tune in to find out. And like last time, you can play our...
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Who wants to be a this IS research expert?
Does Nick really know what he is talking about? Time to find out. We play a trivia quiz with fifteen questions about information systems research. Nick has an audience joker, a telephone joker, and a 50:50 joker -and he needs all of them to make it through the levels. How well do you know the...
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Do you prefer a prestigious or a rigorous journal?
Journals play an important role for academics. They disseminate new knowledge and separate good from bad research. They also signal competencies, reputation, and standing. Publishing in certain journals often means your work is more rigorous. It may also mean your work is more visible and gets...
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If you're not using ChatGPT to cheat in research, you're not going with the times
Let's say we are unethical people, trying to get ahead in academia and gain accolades for the sake of promotion and income and so forth. In an age where artificial intelligence and LLMs are entering the academic enterprise, has "cheating" changed? Are there new ways of fabricating, fudging,...
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The definitive guide to ranking IS journals
In 2026, everything is different. AI is scaling both research and publishing productivity. Impact factors no longer matter. Big name journal publishers launch offspring journals with little credentials other than the brand. How should we make sense of all this to figure out which journals are...
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Nick and Jan reporting live from the International Conference on Information Systems
As usual in the final episode of the year, we hand out three awards for what we think are some of the finest pieces of information systems scholarship produced this year. Except that this time, we are live at the International Conference on Information Systems in Nashville, Tennessee, in a room...
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Doing research on prime ministers
It only took us five years but we finally got Stefan Seidel on the podcast. We have been talking about him and his scholarship for a while. Today we finally get to ask him about his recent technology regulation paper, his view on grounded theorizing in information systems, his forthcoming special...
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Managing academics is like herding cats
Some academics go into the office every day; some are rarely ever seen on campus. Is one way better than the other? Who better to ask than the brilliant Ella Hafermalz who spent her career on the topic of remote work and its implications for belonging, community, collaboration, and performance.…
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When you watch Tik Tok, your maturity in the academic enterprise is zero
A key problem in empirically oriented research, especially inductive and abductive work, is figuring out which theoretical lens or scaffold to apply to uncover novel insights. In other words, which theory should you use? We discuss a few heuristics scholars can draw on to reach a higher level of...
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Data is the fuel that sets innovation on fire
Most think that algorithms are the modern root cause of innovations. But Marta Stelmaszak says not only are organizations today powered by data, they innovate through data. With several other colleagues, Marta is bringing data studies back to the forefront of information systems research. She...
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If you're writing a paper about AI you are not allowed to talk about AI
When we discuss artificial intelligence, what metaphors do we use to illustrate what we mean? Is artificial intelligence some sort of robot—like Ultron—or is it an organism—like a beehive? What happens to our expectations, our thinking, and our conclusions when we change these metaphors, say…
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Nick's rules for a good PhD education
We are together in South Bend and teach a class to PhD students in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. Our joint teaching experience makes us wonder: What should all doctoral students learn or what should we all teach the next generation of IS students? We come up…
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Should all qualitative researchers use LLMs?
One of the big topics at the AOM 2025 conference this summer was the use of large language models in the research process, especially in qualitative studies. We expand this discussion by asking: can qualitative research be automated—or augmented? Yes and no. Some of the advantages LLMs bring to…
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Cognitive conflict, courage, humility, and respect: Ingredients for a productive academic discourse
A new season of podcast episodes is starting and what better place to kick it off as the world's largest business and management conference. We are recording this episode at AOM 2025 in beautiful Copenhagen, made possible through a generous invite from Attila Marton from CBS who organized a...
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Elitism, conflicts of interest, and collusion in the information systems field?
Is there collusion in our field? Do we have elites running wild, making sure that their work gets published whilst the rest of us struggles to find room to publish our own work? And are we handling conflicts of interest that may exist between authors and the editors who are charged with making...
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The great debate
Which research methods are better, quantitative or qualitative? What is more important, getting a richer picture of what goes on in organizations, or seeking generalizable insights about causality? This debate has raged at the very least since Glaser and Strauss popularized the grounded theory...
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Ask us anything - Part Two
We continue with our special "Ask us anything" episode to celebrate the centenary of the This IS Research podcast. This time, we handle questions such as "do we have to worry about ontology?" - No; "should we engage in community building?" Yes; and "what have you learned from the podcast?" A…
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Ask us anything – Part one
We have an anniversary to celebrate: one hundred episodes of the This IS Research podcast. We mark the occasion by answering questions we received from our audience: Which bear is the best, who likes a hug more... and what advice would we give about starting as an assistant professor, pivoting…
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Are digital technologies helping to green our planet?
In 2010, the Association for Information Systems formed a special interest group (SIGGreen) to nurture an international community of academics that study the role of digital technologies in fostering environmentally, economically and socially sustainable development. Fifteen years later, we sit...
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How to be an editor 101, or: how to get away with bad paper decisions
Jason Thatcher is back on the show and he is bringing decades of experiences as a journal editor. So we decided we play a game of round robin where each of us is giving rules of what to do (or not to do) as an editor. How long can we sit on papers before we make decisions? On what basis should we...
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If it feels like a shortcut, it's probably a shortcut.
Is it okay to use large language models in the research process? For what task, exactly, and to automate the task or to augment the researcher? In this episode, we try to explore whether and how LLMs could be used in five aspects of the research process - for paper writing, reviewing, data...
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New theories or new scripts for the digital age?
Is there a formula for doing and publishing research on digital phenomena? And if so, it is the same formula as the scripts for IS papers of the past, or has it changed? We discuss how our field has historically worked with reference theories from other disciplines and how we have moved beyond…
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Let's all cheer for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems
Our field of information systems is in the fortunate position that we have our own independent and self-governed association (we have more than one, in fact), which publishes one of the true top journals of our field, which means that the journal is entirely in our control as members. But as...
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The five best episodes to get you started with this podcast
Nick is traveling, Jan is sick - no time to produce a new episode in time. But fear not, we still have a giant archive of episodes that you may have forgotten or not even heard so far. So we picked five of our best episodes and link to them below so that you can re-visit them, or maybe you…
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Is hunting journal articles making us miss the boat of big ideas?
Is the journal publishing process and the "game" around journal publishing forcing us to give up on big ideas and instead work on small ideas about trivial matters? We are not so sure. We think that science needs many different types of academics, and they have all sorts of different ideas, big…
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Stop having your paper rejected for lack of fit
One of the main reasons article submissions get desk-rejected by journals is for lack of fit. But what does that actually mean? And how can we figure this out before we submit our work? Well there are several tests you can do to evaluate the fitness of your work to an information systems journal:...
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Awards under the Christmas Tree
Look at what Santa dropped when he came down the chimney last night. A bunch of valuable ThisISResearch Best paper Awards! As we do at the end of every year, we look back at the finest information systems scholarship our field has produced this year, and we pick some of our favorite papers that…
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What do practitioners want from us?
What do academics have to offer that practitioners do not already have? They have the data academics want. They can analyse it by themselves, sometimes better than academics. They are also not reading our articles. So why would academics bother engaging with them? Why should we even bridge that...
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You just did a bad job doing qualitative research
You set up an assumption, you have a theory, you analyze your data, and you show that the assumption does not hold. Doing good qualitative research is that simple. Except that it's not, of course. On the ground, in the research and writing process, these basic rules can be quite tricky to...
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Have we lost our ability to create big impact?
Did you know there is someone who published a MIS Quarterly paper in its inaugural issue in 1977 and has another one forthcoming in 2024? Hard to fathom but Izak Benbasat has published at least one paper in our top journal in every decade of its existence. Izak has been doing IS scholarship for...
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Can you publish papers on digital technology in Academy of Management Review?
We continue our discussion around theorizing about digital phenomena and publishing conceptual papers. Today, we are joined by Robert Gregory, who has published several theoretical articles on digital technology in Academy of Management Review. He is also an AMR editor for a special issue on AI…
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Journal editorials that are must-reads for every IS scholar
Editorials are spaces in journals where the key stewards of the field leave advice for others about what type of research the journals they lead are looking to publish. We discuss some of our favorite editorials and dissect the advice to dish out for finding important research problems…
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Why you should never write a conceptual paper
Conceptual papers that offer new theories are hard to write and even harder to publish. You do not have empirical data to back up your arguments, which makes the papers easy to reject in the review cycle. We are also typically not well trained in theorizing, and there isn't even a clear process…
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Orthogonal testing planes and electricity in the kitchen
Did you know that when you spend time on an online platform, you could be experiencing between six to eight different experimental treatments that stem from several hundred A/B tests that run concurrently? That's how common digital experimentation is today. And while this may be acceptable in...
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The three most useless slides in conference presentations
We are back with the usual dose of fortnightly folksy academic wisdom sprinkled in with some serious and substantive conversations. We kick this new season off by discussing observations we made at this year's Academy of Management conference in Chicago. We talk about how to get the most out of...
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How to do a literature review
Many people think of summer as the best time to read. On the beach, on the airplane to a vacation, in between semesters… Sounds like a perfect time to do a literature review. But there are many ways to do a literature review, and in all honesty, we think most people choose the wrong type of…
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Did we learn anything?
Time to reflect a bit. After our conversations with three excellent but very different IS researchers, we sit down and ponder the lessons we learnt from the three previous podcasts with Jan vom Brocke, Shaila Miranda, and Jason Thatcher. So did we learn anything? You betcha. We talk about the...
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Behavioral research is alive and well … online
Behavioral research is alive and well ... online Some time ago, we wondered whether survey research is dead. Today, we speak with Jason Thatcher, who argues the exact opposite. He gives us plenty of advice on how to design online experiments, sample rigorously on platforms like Prolific, build...
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Generalization or generalizability, that is the question
Shaila Miranda is with us today. She has done some amazing theory construct research using computational methods before this was really an accepted thing. We discuss which work she built her research around to give it legitimacy, what good stopping rules are for authors or reviewers to know when...
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The Elon Musk of Information Systems
According to the internet, Elon Musk is often praised for his visionary mindset, innovation, risk-taking attitude, and energy. Jan vom Brocke is just like that, we think. With the positivity he brings into every project and meeting, Jan has been right at the center of many seminal developments in...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Professors Nick Berente from the University of Notre Dame and Jan Recker from the University of Hamburg talk about current and persistent topics in information systems research, a field that explores how digital technologies change business and society. You can find papers and other materials we discuss in each episode at http://www.janrecker.com/this-is-research-podcast/.
HOSTED BY
Nick Berente and Jan Recker
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this IS research currently has 125 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Professors Nick Berente from the University of Notre Dame and Jan Recker from the University of Hamburg talk about current and persistent topics in information systems research, a field that explores how digital technologies change business and society. You can find papers and other materials we...
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this IS research publishes regularly with 125 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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this IS research is created and hosted by Nick Berente and Jan Recker.
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