TY - ABST T1 - ICIS 2008 Panel Report: Open Access Publishing to Nurture the Sprouts of Knowledge and the Future of Information Systems Research Y1 - 2009 A1 - Avital, Michel A1 - Björk, Bo-Christer A1 - Boland, Richard J A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Lyytinen, Kalle A1 - Majchrzak, Ann KW - Information System AB -

The advent of the Internet and the subsequent adoption of Open Access schemata are changing the nature of the scholarly discourse. In response, we seek to stimulate a debate about the role and desired forms of Open Access publishing in the context of the Information System (IS) discipline. We explore the potential contribution of an Open Access perspective on publishing IS-related research and also discuss the roles of traditional journals and their prospects in the contexts of our observations. In particular, we focus on the new possibilities of publishing work-in-progress and its potential benefit for knowledge dissemination including the prospects of turning today's limited scholarly exchange into mass collaboration. We illustrate our vision with a working prototype of an Open Access disciplinary repository entitled Sprouts (http://sprouts.aisnet.org). Our aim is to inspire new thinking about the role of Open Access publishing, the potential of its application to disciplinary repositories of emergent work, its anticipated repercussions on our work practices, and its long-term implication for the impact of IS scholarship and the well-being of our community at large. We call for participation and further action in realizing a global repository of IS research in progress. This paper builds on a panel on Open Access that was presented at the 2008 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), held in Paris, France, in December 2008.

JF - Communications of the Association for Information Systems VL - 24 ER -