This appendix reports the results of a brief analysis undertaken of the international impact of Australian IS scholars.
The period considered is limited to 1965–95. The measures used have been limited to publications in the discipline’s flagship journals and conferences.
The following people have been excluded, because their work during the relevant period was undertaken elsewhere or they were only visiting: Janice Burn, Angele Cavaye, Philip Ein-Dor, Bob Galliers and Michael Vitale.
The first specialist journal, MIS Quarterly, has been published since 1977. Authorship was strongly American during its first two decades. The first Australian author appears to have been Iris Vessey, in June 1980 (vol. 4, no. 2) and again in June 1981 (vol. 5, no. 2). (She could also have been the first non-American author and/or the first non-American PhD to publish there.) Ted Stohr followed in December 1983 (vol. 7, no. 4). Vessey published again in March 1988 (vol. 12, no. 1), this time in conjunction with Peter Tait of Touche Ross, Brisbane. Rick Watson appeared for the first time in September 1988 (vol. 12, no. 3), Eric J. Walton (then at UWA) in December 1988 (vol. 12, no. 4), Peter Weill in March 1989 (vol. 13, no. 1), Watson again in June 1990 (vol. 14, no. 2), Michael Lawrence and Graham Low from UNSW in June 1993 (vol. 17, no. 2), and Watson again in June 1995 (vol. 19, no. 2). Tellingly perhaps, Ron Weber appears only as an editor—and only from 2002.
In Information & Management, the first paper by an Australian was by Ross Jeffery and Iris Vessey in 1980, the next by Ross Jeffery and Michael Lawrence in 1981, then Bob Edmundson and Ross Jeffery in 1984, Vessey again in 1986, Michael Sager in 1988, Bill Cundiff in 1989 and then Guy Gable in 1991.
Information Systems Research (ISR) was a relative late comer on the journal scene—in 1989. Australians were slow to break into it as well, with the first published appearing to be Iris Vessey in 1995 (vol. 6), Ron Weber twice in 1996 and Peter Seddon in 1997.
Brisk analysis of the early years in Management Science identified no papers before 1996 (vol. 42), when Ron Weber and Guy Gable published. Rick Watson published there in 1998.
Communications of the ACM was an outlet for quality refereed articles in IS from the late 1970s until it adopted a lower-quality magazine format in the early 1990s. Early Australian IS authors were Iris Vessey and Ron Weber in February 1983 (vol. 26, no. 2) and again in January 1986 (vol. 29, no. 1), Ron Weber in January 1988 (vol. 31, no. 1) and Roger Clarke in May 1988 (vol. 31, no. 5).
The first ICIS Proceedings in 1980 included a paper by Ted Stohr (already of NYU); although the ‘I’ stands for ‘international’, the first ICIS was addressed exclusively by people resident in the United States. The 1981 proceedings included six papers with non-American authors (from the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and Israel); 1982 included a similar number, with Finland, Sweden, Israel, Canada and Singapore represented; 1983 was similar, but Norway and Italy made their first appearance, and Ted Stohr again contributed.
The first contributions from Australia were in 1985: by Iris Vessey and Ron Weber and by Vessey as sole author (both at that stage were at the University of Queensland); and by Rick Watson, then of the West Australian CAE. Weber reappeared in 1988. In 1989, Australia was represented by Weber, Peter Creasy (also of the University of Queensland) and Peter Weill (at that stage of the University of Melbourne). Rick Watson appeared in 1989, although by then he was at Georgia. In 1990, Weber appeared again, as did Weill and Marianne Broadbent. In 1991, Weber (twice), Weill and Broadbent, and Watson again featured, and Paula and Paul Swatman made their first appearance. The steady increase in competition for space has meant that Australian representation on the ICIS program, although consistent, has seldom been as high since then. It did include the Best Paper Award in 1996—awarded to Broadbent and Weill (with two non-Australian co-authors).
The ECIS conference has also had high standards since it began in 1993, and the involvement of Australians has been considerable. Galliers and Whitley note that, in the first 10 years (1993–2002), ‘[T]he UK [had] by far the largest proportion of papers [398, 24 per cent], the second largest contributors [being] Australia (153, 9 per cent] and the USA [143, 9 per cent, ahead of Germany 134, 8 per cent and the Netherlands 103, 6 per cent].’
In summary, by 1995, it appears that only two resident Australians had published in MIS Quarterly, Management Science and Information Systems Research combined, and only a further three in Information & Management and two in Communications of the ACM. Moreover, Walstrom and Leonard’s (2000) ‘Citation classics’ article did not appear to include any contributions by Australians (although of course the same can be said for most countries, as the research arena has been dominated so heavily by US academics). On a proportional basis, Australians did not figure strongly in the early years of the discipline, but a small number of individuals forged substantial international reputations.
In more recent years, Australians have been well represented in international conferences, particularly in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America. Their impact in major journals continues to be swamped, however, because of the large and in part very professional population of American, and to a lesser extent Canadian and European, IS researchers. The United Kingdom is probably the next most influential country, after which Australia can probably claim its place—at worst on a per capita par with Hong Kong and Singapore, and with the Netherlands and Germany. Many countries in Europe, Asia and South America are, of course, held back by the very strong English-language bias in the IS discipline.