Toward a Conceptualization of Research Output Quality

摘要

In this paper, we have seen the current method of evaluating scholarly output is that of counting papers published in ranked journals. This methodology assumes the publication of papers in a particular journal is a warrant for assuming it has a certain level of quality. However, the concept of scholarly output quality has not, to this point, been conceptualized in a way that has been generally accepted. A review of 39 papers in the IS literature dealing with scholarly output quality has shown that quality is generally used in an implicit, undefined, and generally unproblematic way within the literature. As many researchers have realized this leads to contradictory and otherwise inconsistent results. To resolve this issue, this paper has proposed that scholarly output quality may be conceptualized as "fitness for use", i.e. is the paper under consideration useful for informing my research. Fitness for use deals with how the field uses scholarly output and can deal with the output in positive or negative modalities. This conceptualization of scholarly output quality is proposed as a subjective evaluation: constructed by individuals based on their experience, influenced by the different experiences of various groups which results in different perceptions of fitness for use, should be done by as large a group in the field as possible to avoid bias, and in so doing, would create a more open and transparent method of evaluating quality. Finally, a research agenda was created that includes the need to develop an efficient and effective means of operationalizing this concept in order to utilize it in practice and research to be done on the antecedents of fitness for use.