Web review system
Web review system
The new Web-based review management system (www.itandpeople.org) for Information Technology & People has been running for just over one year, so it is appropriate to review how the system operates and to outline some of the benefits it offers both to authors and to reviewers.
The system allows authors to view their papers online as well as track the progress of the paper through the reviewing process. Reviewers can also collect copies of the paper electronically and submit their reviews online. The system also allows all reviewers to receive copies of the final decision and reviews submitted.
Since the review system has been launched, the Journal has received over 180 papers for review (including 54 papers and abstracts for the forthcoming special issue on “Actor network theory” and 13 papers for the recent special issue focusing on “IT management in the Middle East”). The Journal publishes an average of 16 papers per year. These submission and acceptance rates compare favourably with other leading journals in the field.
Managing the reviews of the 100 or so regular papers is the responsibility of the “review managers” (the journal co-editors and associate editors),with each paper having a single review manager. The review managers pick up papers to review based on their own research interests and, after an initial screening, send the papers out to reviewers. Because the papers are available electronically we are able to ask reviewers for a quick turnaround on their reviews (normally a month for the first review). On the basis of the reviews received and their own impressions of the paper, the review managers can then make final decisions to accept or reject the paper or ask for further revisions.
Approximately one-quarter of all submissions are rejected in the first screening process either because the submitted paper is far outside the scope of the Journal (see www.itandpeople.org/about.htm)or because the paper is not ready in that version. A weakness with many of these“not ready” submissions is that they look at an important issue (for example, the effects of IT on banking, or the problems of project planning) in a novel organisational or national context but then fail to tell us anything about the context; thus implying a strong technologically deterministic view that the features of the technology overwhelm the features of the local context. This is a debatable position and papers that provide this extra contextual information allow the reviewers to form their own opinions about the role of the context in their studies.
In this issue
This issue contains four excellent papers that illustrate the international and interdisciplinary nature of the Journal. The paper by Stefan Lagrosen provides a fascinating study of the take-up of the Internet by museums. The study reflects on the various museum activities that the Internet can deliver and promote: information, education and entertainment. He grounds his study in an empirical investigation of 371 Swedish Web sites.
Information and entertainment are also key themes in the paper by Wayne G. Lutters and Mark S. Ackerman. They study an online environment about Disneyland implemented as a dial-in bulletin board, which, in practice, limits participation to those located close to Disneyland and the bulletin board system. By providing a qualitative study of the interactions in the environment they are able to draw important lessons about the relationship between location and participation in a virtual environment.
In contrast Pratyush Bharati and Daniel Berg use a different research approach to study important questions around service quality. They use a survey sent to the US electric utility industry to explore the factors that they believe affect service quality and make important contributions to our understanding of this core topic.
The final paper, by Carl Adams and David Avison, looks at the dangers inherent in the use of techniques. In their paper, the authors draw on the cognitive psychology literature to argue that, although techniques are often seen as simple aids to help carry out a task, they may in fact restrict understanding by framing the ways of thinking about the problem situation.
Eleanor H. Wynn and, Edgar Whitley
